May 23, 1992. At 5:56 p.m. on the road that connects Palermo with the Punta Raisi airport, at the Capaci junction, the cars in which judge Giovanni Falcone, his wife Francesca Morvillo and the men of the escort were traveling jumped literally through the air. Five hundred kilos of TNT caused the explosion on the highway section.
In addition to the magistrate and his wife, the escort agents Vito Schifani, Antonio Montinaro and Rocco Dicillo lost their lives. A massacre planned by the mafia. A veritable declaration of war against the State that would continue with the massacre in Via d’Amelio, which less than two months later hit judge Paolo Borsellino and his escort, and the attacks in Florence, Rome and Milan in 1993.
Giovanni Falcone would have been eighty-three years old today.
Let’s go through its history, remembered by Rai-cultura.
A boy from Palermo, who initially after school decides to follow his passion for the sea and go to the Livorno Academy. Then, a decision that changes his life: he returns to Sicily and enrolls in law school. The degree, he entered the judiciary and in 1964 the appointment of magistrate in Lentini. Shortly after, he moved to Trapani as assistant prosecutor, where he stayed for about twelve years, beginning to be interested in the mafia phenomenon. A tragic event anticipates his transfer to the Palermo Palace of Justice: on September 25, 1979, Judge Cesare Terranova is executed by the mafia and murdered in his car along with his escort agent Lenin Mancuso, before he could take office at in front of the Palermo Education Office. The same one where Falcone shortly after began to work and follow various investigations, under the direction of the research advisor Rocco Chinnici.
Once again, a tragic event marks a fundamental passage in the life of the magistrate: the assassination of Chinnici on July 29, 1983 and the arrival at the Education Office of Antonino Caponnetto, who puts into practice the ideas of his predecessor and forms the Anti-mafia Pool, an essential liaison tool between all magistrates involved in mafia-related investigations.
A long road begins for Giovanni Falcone, Paolo Borsellino and the other Palermo magistrates, dotted with numerous victories such as the repentance of Tommaso Buscetta, the sentence of the Maxitrial and many difficult moments such as the murders of the policemen Montana and Cassarà and the temporary transfer to the dell’Asinara prison causes the danger of alleged attacks for Borsellino, Falcone and their respective families.
In 1988, a hard blow for Giovanni Falcone: the unsuccessful appointment at the head of the Education Office instead of Caponnetto and the difficult relations with the latter’s successor, Antonino Meli. Several negative events happened for Falcone until his transfer to Rome in 1991, to the direction of the Criminal Affairs Office of the Ministry of Justice, at the call of Claudio Martelli. On one of the many trips back to his native Sicily, on May 23, 1992, on the road that goes from the airport to Palermo, “l’ATTENTUNI”.
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