Once upon a time on Sicily ^Featured

 

For Generations

 

(JHB/SCT)
Italy and the Mafia- an almost endless history of entanglement between politics and organized crime.

It is not just since yesterday that the Italian courts have been trying to prosecute the countless Mafia families on Sicily who have spread like a serious illness all over the world.

After the senseless murder of the Mafia hunter Falcone in 1992, interest in the families seemed to be waning in other parts of Italy as well.

The Mafía, though always different, stays a miserable parasite in all its actions. Brutal, dangerous and rigorous in asserting one's own interests still today and back then 1980.

Bologna 1980

Anni di piombo

Was it the Mafia who wanted to distract from a bloody war in the South of Italy, which gave the assassins of Bologna the opportunity to commit this attack at all?

Back then, there had already been interweaving between the Mafia and right-wing paramilitaries, including links to the alleged stay-behind network of an organization called Gladio.

The revelations of former Prime Minister Andreotti, which he made 1990, after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, sound still today almost unbelievable in this context. Whether the underground organization had used the Mafia was never officially mentioned. It was always suspected. But today there is evidence.

A significant role in the days played the Masonic Lodge P2, which had been infiltrated by the Mafia, and the head of military intelligence service of Italy, General Giuseppe Santovitos, SISMI. The Masonic Lodge P2 had very interesting members such as Silvio Berlusconi
There were dislocations between all the groups involved. Persons were attributed to the Sicilian families who were in the Masonic Lodge and equally in the Military Intelligence. The SISMI was placed under the direct order of Gladio's operations in Europe whilst the Cold War

Absurdly, two SISMI officials were sentenced in 1995 for obstructing the investigation into the Strage di Bologna.

The year 1980 started very bad for Italy. The President of the Regional Chamber of Sicily, Piersanti Mattarella, was killed in an attack of the Cosa Nostra or 'Ndrangetha.

Connection to Spain

Even today, former mafiosi who live on Tenerife are speaking with awe of the connections of Cosa Nostra, 'Ndrangetha at the time- and again and again, it is the Banda della Magliana was funded by the SISMI. Old mafiosi on Tenerife explain that the protagonist, Franco Giuseppucci, who was a member of the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari received direct orders before he was killed - after he installed a network of criminals in Italy.

Today the 'Ndrangetha is mainly active in drugs and human trafficking on the Canary Islands. In addition, many millions in dubious construction projects on the Island washed profits of illegal business.

A self funding group who could be used for any job to terminate Italy in the early days of 1980 was the plan of Gladio. The organisation feared the takeover of Communists in Italy. The Mafia would have been in a very tricky situation, crime wouldn't be possible any longer. So Mafia and Gladio had common goals. Even today, the circles of the ex mafiosi are talking about why the Italian Republic did not want the perpetrators caught.

Too short before, the murder of Aldo Moro had happened. Recently, as an ageing Mafioso admitted, thanks to his contacts into the underworld, the Campanian and the Calabrian mafia, who provided the terrorists (Brigate Rosse) with weapons and money, it was possible for the terrorists to commit this heinous act on the unforgotten Prime Minister of Italy.

Raffaele Cutolo explained that the Brigate Rosse, a left-wing, equally dangerous terrorist organization, committed the murder.

But many intellectuals commented on the events surrounding Aldo Moro's kidnapping and murder and many of them sought out the Prime Minister's cowardly murderers in the right corner, in the same line with Gladio.

The perpetrators were never investigated and the grisly crime could not be resolved until today, almost 39 years later.

Was Aldo Moro, with his ideas, to conclude a historic compromise with the Communists of Enrico Berlinguer, in the way of P2's intentions?

On Tenerife one speaks of the connections of the secret P2 and the countless actions, which ran under "white flag".

One man was the symbolic place holder for the key events that were related to this attack in Bologna, Licio Gelli

Gelli was, according to investigations, the linchpin between the 'Ndrangetha and the right-wing terrorist movement of Ordine Nuovo, which was to maintain the internal tension in Italy. That was the goal of the Gladio strategy.

Gelli used in every situation his connection to the Mafia and even fled to Latin America, after a coup attempt in 1970 failed in Italy.

The link between the bombers of Bologna and the Mafia, in the end as well the link to Gladio.

Strage di Bologna

(Bombing at Bologna: August 2nd 1980 Beppe Briguglio, Patrizia Pulga, Medardo Pedrini, Marco Vaccari)

The attack killed 85 people from different nations and injured more than 200 people after the explosion of a bomb placed in a suitcase in the station of Bologna.

Thanks to the fearless citizens of Bologna, Italy's brave civil society, many of the victims survived. The honour will always remain connected with the citizens of the city and its history.

Although the Italian police endeavoured to portray the cowardly plot in the period after the incident  as an accident, the track quickly led to neo-fascists of Ordine Nuovo,(Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR)) banned since 1973.

These Nazi group had committed numerous attacks since 1969, including the bomb on the Night express train Rome-Munich, 1974.

According to the investigation of the prosecutor also accomplices of Carlos, an internationally wanted terrorist in Bologna, at the time of the assassination.

It was never proofed Carlos or his "terror siblings" were involved in the attack in Bologna.

In years after in Italy it was possible to buy the own truth. PM Cossiga pointed the finger of suspicion at the far left "Red Brigades"

The most realistic traces led to former Nazis in Spain, to which one of the later main accused had contact.
Francesca Mambro und Giusva Fioravanti were sentenced after 15 years to life in prison.

Parts of the mafia structures emigrated from Sicily to Tenerife in the 1970s and in the 1980s. From there the exiled Mafioso took intensive contact to the Francoists.

 

Moreover, during the 1980s investigation in Italy, it emerged that the principal connections of the then Italian fascists led to the simultaneous running Operation Condor in Latin America.
The Operation Condor was the same strategy of tension like Gladio, made by the CIA.