Borsellino family legal: “Lo Forte hid the filing of the mafia-tenders dossier”

(from the correspondent Elvira Terranova) – Five days before the Via D’Amelio massacre, judge Paolo Borsellino attended a meeting at the Palermo prosecutor’s office. On that occasion there was also talk of the ‘mafia and procurement’ investigation, which the magistrate had dealt with for a long time. “But in that meeting the prosecutor Guido Lo Forte hid from the judge that he had signed the dismissal of the investigation just the day before”. The complaint arrives in room B of the Court of Caltanissetta, where the trial on the misdirection of the Via D’Amelio massacre is held, by the lawyer Fabio Trizzino, lawyer of the Borsellino family, but also husband of Lucia Borsellino, the daughter major than the judge killed in the attack of 19 July 1992. Trizzino said he was opposed to the defense request of the policemen Michele Ribaudo and Fabrizio Mattei, accused together with another policeman, Mario Bo, of aggravated slander, to hear in court, the judges Roberto Scarpinato, Guido Lo Forte and Giuseppe Pignatone. Precisely on the Mafia and procurement investigation. Therefore, the dossier comes back strongly in the process. As had already happened in the other five debates dedicated to the mafia massacres of 1992. “As it was formulated, the request is unacceptable, from my point of view – says the lawyer Fabio Trizzino – Because this is a very dear topic to my family, but this is not the place to develop a possible rereading. If there is the will to develop the theme of the mafia and contracts, it is enough to give consent to acquire two acts “. And he adds: “I’m talking about the dismissal order of judge Lo Forte (on the mafia and contracts ed) and the request for hidden principals bis”. “If you tell me that we want to understand why at that meeting Borsellino is silent about the request for dismissal, this then limits the circumstance – says the lawyer Trizzino – but if we have to carry out the ‘mafia and procurement’ process here, frankly, not Does this make sense”. At the end, at the end of the hearing, after a brief council chamber, the Court rejects the request for revocation advanced by the defense of the civil party, but also by the Public Prosecutor, represented in the courtroom by prosecutors Maurizio Bonaccorso and Stefano Luciani, and confirms the testimonies of the Palermo attorney general Roberto Scarpinato, the former Rome prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone and the ex Messina prosecutor Guido Lo Forte. The deposition of the three is scheduled for the next hearing, on November 26th. The retired former magistrate’s reply: ‘I’ll talk about it in the courtroom, even if I haven’t received the summons yet’ But what happened at that meeting on 14 July 1992, that is, five days before the Via D’Amelio massacre, of which is the lawyer of the Borsellino family speaking? It was a briefing by the magistrates of the Palermo prosecutor’s office, and on that occasion Paolo Borsellino asked for news on the investigation. From subsequent statements to the CSM by the magistrates present at that meeting, it emerged that no one told Borsellino that the filing proposal had already been signed. And Guido Lo Forte, who signed it, was among those present. Reached by the Adnkronos on the phone, for a reply, the former magistrate, now retired, merely said: “Having to talk about this subject at the trial, as I learned, I prefer not to say anything at the moment. I will do it in court. “. Although he added: “Up to now, to be honest, I haven’t received any quotes yet …”. The ‘mafia and procurement’ investigation was strongly desired by Giovanni Falcone, and then resumed by Borsellino, and concerned the connections between politicians, entrepreneurs and mafia members. The investigation was conducted between the late 1980s and 1992 by the Carabinieri del Ros led by then Colonel Mario Mori and Captain Giuseppe De Donno. Both were recently acquitted, on appeal, in the trial on the State-Mafia negotiations in Palermo. The investigation revealed, for the first time, the existence of a business committee, managed by the mafia and with deep ties with exponents of politics and business of national importance, for the division of public contracts in Sicily “.” Scarpinato’s testimony is not relevant – continued the Borsellinos’ lawyer – because he was not present at the meeting, while Pignatone was no longer the owner of the file at that time. These are elements that must be reread in order to deepen, not here, but elsewhere, the behavior of these magistrates. Therefore, for me, as the request was formulated, from my point of view it is unacceptable. “Request rejected. Attorney Trizzino ‘A separate trial should be opened on this investigation. ‘today’s hearing, “the acquisition of the document in which the judges Francesco Messineo, Renato Di Natale, Francesco Paolo Giordano give an account and reason for all the events that involved the investigations carried out in Caltanissetta in relation to the management of the mafia dossier and tenders “.” Furthermore, the events connected to ‘mafia and contracts’ were of such a complexity that to be able to get by … other than a simple examination – says the lawyer – it would be necessary to open a separate trial “.” Of trials on the massacre. five were built in via D’Amelio. And it almost seems that the importance of the mafia and tenders has never been examined in previous proceedings, but this is not the case. In the sentence of the ‘Borsellino ter’ trial, to which the sentence quater refers, gives a broad cross-section of the importance for the purposes of the motive for the possible acceleration of the via D’Amelio massacre “.” This theme of evidence is like an ocean that opens in front of us – says the lawyer Fabio Trizzino – Even these civil parties, who would like to investigate this aspect, but we believe that there are two events that should lead to a rereading of those events, but not here. And I’m talking about the late declarations of Massimo Russo and Alessandra Camassa in which Borsellino defined his office as a ‘nest of vipers’. they rebelled against the Prosecutor Giammanco who told us about a meeting in which Borsellino asked Guido Lo Forte for further information and Lo Forte hid from him that on the 13th he had signed an archiving “. Today the deposition of the former Deputy Prosecutor Antonio Ingroia was also expected, but he he made it known that he was abroad until next December 10, and therefore his hearing, requested by the Palermo prosecutor’s office, was skipped, while the lawyer Luigi Li Gotti, the first lawyer of the false repentant Vincenzo Scarantino, came. Answering the questions of the lawyer Giuseppe Panepinto, who defends the policeman Mario Bo, he retraced the two interrogations of the former picciotto della Guadagna who falsely accused several people of a massacre in via D’Amelio, all sentenced to life imprisonment, only to be retracted. “I remember that Vincenzo Scarantino was a river in flood during the interrogations, he spoke at an incredible speed and without pauses, there were almost no questions. There were very few,” said Li Gotti. It was June 1994. And during a coffee break, Scarantino told his lawyer, who defended Scarantino for only three months, that the state would promise him the sum of 400 million old lire. “He also told me that he was promised that he would be released from prison – says Li Gotti – and I, with great patience, fulfilled my duty and told Scarantino that it was all nonsense, because what he could get from the state was required by law and that he would forget the promise of 400 million lire. And I explained to him about the other collaborators, both on the sanctioning treatment “. Li Gotti also recalled that in that period, in 1994, the period after the massacres, “there was mistrust of the lawyers who defended the collaborators of justice.” Scarantino’s defense lasted only six months. In the autumn of 1994 Li Gotti abandoned the defense of the false repentant. The former collaborator Scarantino has always denounced torture in Pianosa Always urged by the lawyer Panepinto, Li Gotti, he said he had “never seen Scarantino’s suggestions for answers, also because, for my ethical practice, I would not have signed the report”. According to the prosecutor, however, Scarantino was indoctrinated during interrogations to falsely accuse people. The same former collaborator, now out of the protection program, in several interrogations Scarantino said he had suffered “torture” and “ill-treatment” in the Pianosa prison. “In the prison, on me – said Scarantino – they had carte blanche and could do, they killed me, they put me in cungelaturi, then they melted me ” and then he added that` `they gave me the bites that I pareu u zombies, when he walked he had persuaded every minimum of dignity, he had persuaded everything to dignity that a human being could have, he had nothing “. In one of the recent hearings, one of the accused, Fabrizio Mattei, reiterated forcefully, to the point of crying out through tears, “that he had never indoctrinated” the former repentant Vincenzo Scarantino before the interrogations. That he “never gave” the former picciotto della Guadagna “suggestions” or “that he wrote notes on the minutes”. And of “never having investigated the Via D’Amelio massacre”. Li Gotti still remembers how in that period “there was a general climate of perplexity about the statements of Vincenzo Scarantino, it was a real fact. There were many perplexities. I did not see satisfaction for this turning point for the massacre of Via D’Amelio. That was what I too was experiencing. Perplexities demonstrated repeatedly “. And he tells an anecdote: “On the return trip from the Pianosa prison, on the helicopter, apart from the noise, because you had to talk with headphones, there was a lot of tiredness and therefore we didn’t talk at all. To Ilda Boccassini and doctor Petralia I did not mention the interrogation and no observations were made. ” And then he underlined that even the collaborator of justice Francesco Marino Mannoia, speaking of Vincenzo Scarantino, had argued that Scarantino “was not a ‘picciotto’ of Cosa Nostra, who was not a man of honor”. “I remember that he said: ‘I know him, we used to send him out to buy cigarettes’, and I remember that these statements did not surprise anyone. Nobody.” In 1995 the Caltanissetta Public Prosecutor’s Office subjected Scarantino to a confrontation with his collaborator Marino Mannoia. Already then Mannoia had concluded, and reported to the investigators, reinforcing what other collaborators had said, that the “picciotto della Guadagna” was not a mafioso. The trial was postponed to next November 26 to hear judges Scarpinato, Lo Forte and Pignatone.