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Tomaso Buscetta: Palermo 1986: What makes this Mafia trial different from any other is the cracking of the Mafia code of silence. One man’s testimony is said to convict over 400 members of the Mafia. His betrayal makes him the Mafia’s most wanted man … ‘The most significant Mafia turncoat in criminal history.’ Our Godfather, news, Netflix 2019
A 3,000-page confession that links Mafia groups in Italy with those of the United States. ibid.
Brazilian police confirmed the notorious gangster Tomaso Buscetta has been to Italy where he faces drug-trafficking charges. ibid.
They sent him to the United States because Italy had no infrastructure to protect him. ibid. wife
The Mafia is glamorised, and I refuse to do that. Andrew Camilleri, creator of Inspector Montalbano
To define the Mafia as ‘the industry of violence’ is open to misunderstanding. Violence is a means, not an end; a resource, not the final product. The commodity that is really at stake is protection. It may be argued that ultimately protection rests on the ability to use force, but it does not follow that it coincides with it ... These were people who find it in their individual interest to buy mafia protection. While some may be victims of extortion, many others are willing customers. Professor Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection
I’ll tell you what it is – anti-Italian discrimination. The Sopranos s4e3: Christopher, Silvio at table in street, HBO 2002
They discriminate against all Italians as a group. ibid. Silvio at wheel
It is the Mafia which has betrayed me. Falcone aka Excellent Cadavers 1999 starring Chazz Palminteri & F Murray Abraham & Anna Galiena & Andy Luotto & Lina Sastri & Arnoldo Foa & Ivo Garrani & Pierfrancesco Favino et al, director Ricky Tognazzi
The members of the Commission are responsible for all the murders? ibid. hero to mafia geezer
The branch of the Mob hounded by the Italian justice system is called the Ndrangheta. Lea [Garofalo] tried to help overthrow its power, but only by putting her own life at risk. It was a crime which forced Italy to confront ugly truths. Evil Up Close s5e4: Victim of the Mob
Over the past twenty-five years the victims of the Ndrangheta have been more than two hundred. ibid.
The ’Ndrangheta organisation uses murder, kidnapping and fear to control scores of villages like this … The ’Ndrangheta is actually growing in power, spreading internationally. Mediterranean with Simon Reeve I, BBC 2018
In the 1960s the history of the Mafia changed for ever when the Sicilian Mob began flooding the United States with … heroin: heroin would turn the Mafia into a global organisation and make them more money than they had ever made before; but it would also sow the seeds of their own destruction. Inside the Mafia: Going Global, National Geographic 2005
Shutting down the French Connection was indirectly opening the door to … the Sicilian Mafia. ibid.
Galante: a heroin man … multi-billion-dollar profits and unparalleled violence. In the ’70s the Bonanno family was known as … the heroin family. ibid.
The Sicilians set up a sophisticated smuggling system … Toto Riina … his factories were producing ton after ton of pure heroin. ibid.
The Sicilians had turned on Galante. ibid.
Henry Hill regularly used Pizza restaurants for his heroin drop-offs. ibid.
They were two very different godfathers separated by 4,000 miles of ocean. John Gotti was the Teflon don, a New York mobster who adored public attention and defied lawmen to get him. Toto Riina was a peasant from rural Sicily, a boss who operated in the shadows. In the late ’80s and early ’90s it required two very different approaches to bring them to justice. Inside the Mafia: The Godfathers, National Geographic 2005
In Sicily it would take a revolution by the people to put Riina behind bars. ibid.
Toto Riina – an elusive psychopathic killer from the two of Corleone. ibid.
Falcone needed a way of connecting Mafia boss Riina to the crimes carried out in his name by his army of killers. ibid.
It was perhaps the most lucrative criminal racket in history. Between 1979 and 1984 the Sicilian Mafia smuggled nearly two billion dollars’ worth of heroin into the US. It made mobsters on both sides of the Atlantic rich. It also led to war. In Sicily rival bosses fought for control of the heroin-trafficking empire. The terror this war unleashed drove one Godfather to break Omerta, the Mafia’s sacred code of silence. His act of betrayal would lead to a transatlantic assault on the Mafia and make the first serious dent in their worldwide power. Heroin was flooding into the United States in the late 1970s. Smuggled inside Italian food products and distributed through Pizzarias owned by the Sicilian Mafia. It was known as the Pizza Connection. The US faced an epidemic of heroin addiction. But for American gangstas heroin meant money. And lots of it. Inside the Mafia: The Great Betrayal
In 1981 & 1982 the bodies of Riina’s victims were turning up on the streets of Palermo every three days. ibid.
Riina had murdered his way to the top of the Sicilian Mafia to seize control of the heroin trade to the US. Hundreds of people may have been killed on his orders. Few in Sicily had the courage to stand up to him. ibid.
The most spectacular trial in Mafia history – the Maxi trial was about the begin. Falcone would lead the prosecution. The star witness was Tommaso Buscetta. The trial began in February 1986. 3,000 armed soldiers guarded the bunker. Plus an army tank. Nearly 500 defendants were scheduled for trial … He was on the witness stand for a week protected by bullet-proof glass repeating what he had already told Judge Falcone … 344 Mafiosi were found guilty. ibid.
There’s a dark heart to this tourist dream. Italy is also a society of organised crime, corruption and unsolved murders. Out of this chilling reality a new wave of crime fiction has emerged. With its own twist on the redemptions of the detective novel ... A noir world with no happy endings. Timeshift: Italian Noir: The Story of Italian Crime Fiction, BBC 2010
The detective novels of Andrea Camilleri are set in contemporary Sicily. They deal with the casebook of the worldly Inspector Montalbano of the local police force. ibid.
In That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana Carlo Emilio Gadda employed a crime story to explore Italy’s fascist era. ibid.
Into the 1960s Leonardo Sciascia’s novels would expose the power of the Sicilian Mafia. ibid.
This neo-fascist bombing began a decade of terror. ibid.
In 1978 the kidnapping and murder of former prime minister Aldo Moro troubled Italians. ibid.
The Goodbye Kiss is filmed as a modern-day noir. ibid.
Giancarlo de Cataldo: Romanzo Criminale. ibid.
Soon after Adam Weisphaupt died, Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini was appointed to be the head of the Illuminati in 1834. Mazzini became a 33rd degree mason while attending Genoa university. The most important thing about Mazzini is that he formulated the Mafia. New World Order: One World Government Conspiracy aka Illuminati: Illuminati Plans: End of the World, Youtube 2016
There’s a new front line in the War against organised crime: in southern Italy's rugged highlands a previously unknown criminal group meets ... Europe’s biggest cocaine traffickers. This World: The Mafia’s Secret Bunkers, John Dickie reporting, BBC 2013
Forcing Mafiosi underground into bizarre and sophisticated bunkers. From here they run their criminal empires. ibid.
Calabrian ’Ndrangheta: building this subterranean labyrinth was a major enterprise. ibid.
A secret society of criminals: kidnapping for ransom ... often for years. ibid.
Cosa Nostra works like a shadow state using extortion as its tax. ibid.
A global Mafia federation with an annual turnover estimated at forty-four billion Euros. ibid.
Calabria’s institutions have been profoundly infiltrated. ibid.
The gangstas hold the real power in the region. ibid.