Eighteen innocent years in prison, ‘My life is destroyed’

“It’s hard to forget. When I see the images of the anniversary of the Via D’Amelio massacre on TV, I just think about my destroyed life. I still find it hard to believe that I spent all my youth in prison. As an innocent. And I continue to feel great anger “. Tanino Murana is now a 62-year-old man. Thin, with his gaze fixed at times in the void, he goes back in time. On that July 18, 1994, when he was arrested. With an atrocious accusation. To have been part of the commando that killed, on July 19, 1992, the judge Paolo Borsellino and five officers of the escort. Murana spent 18 years in prison. All his youth. As innocent. Because unjustly accused by a false repentant, Vincenzo Scarantino. In an interview with Adnkronos, Tanino Murana talks about his “destroyed” life but, above all, his “loneliness”. “I was employed at Amia”, the former company for environmental hygiene in Palermo, now Rap. “But after my release, even I was not innocent, nobody wanted to give me a job anymore”. Everything happens between 17 and 18 July 1994, two years after the massacre in via D’Amelio. That evening Gaetano Murana and his wife Antonella are watching TV sitting on the sofa. There was the final of the Italy-Brazil World Cup. Between the first and second half, the news announces on TV the news that Vincenzo Scarantino, a small mafioso from Palermo, has “made full confession” accusing himself of the massacre in via D’Amelio. Scarantino is a surname that is familiar to the garbage man from Palermo. The ‘picciotto’ della Guadagna is his neighbor with whom, however, he has never had any kind of relationship. Murana goes to sleep. He can’t imagine what awaits him the next day. At dawn he leaves the house to go to work. While in the car he is stopped by a police patrol. A few moments later, with sirens blaring, other patrols from the police station’s mobile squad arrive. It is chaos. Murana does not understand. He ends up in handcuffs on the accusation of having acted as a relay, on a scooter, on the morning of July 19, 1992, to the Fiat 126 stuffed with TNT from the Via D’Amelio massacre. He will spend 18 long years in prison. Initially think about a mistaken identity. But the days go by, the weeks as well. And stay in jail. At 41 bis, the so-called hard prison. Only in 2017 did the Caltanissetta Public Prosecutor’s Office ask for the review process, which was held in Catania. Another repentant, a true collaborator of justice, shed light on what happened in via D’Amelio. His name is Gaspare Spatuzza. A few years later Vincenzo Scarantino’s apologies arrived. But in the meantime Gaetano Murana spent his entire youth in prison. ‘It’s hard to forget – he says – I was recently married, with a small child’ “It’s hard to forget – Murana says – when I hear something about the massacre, like yesterday for the anniversary, I get angry. When they arrested me, I was married recently, with a small child, my life has been totally destroyed. Still. They didn’t give me a job, I was an Amia employee with many years of service, yet I lost everything “. Then, the voice becomes feeble, and Murana begins to tell “the abuses and tortures suffered in the Pianosa prison”. “They cannot be forgotten – he says – I have suffered harassment of all kinds. They played with my dignity”. And he says that when he saw the images of the violence in the prison of Santa Maria Capua Vetere on TV, he “burst into tears,” he says. “I relived these facts,” he says. “I do not hide the fact that tears have sprung up – recalls Murana – I relived those moments when I was in Pianosa in the famous ‘disco’. They called it that because it ‘danced’ for the blows and abuses. I suffered from everything and more. … “. Murana is a civil party in the trial for the misdirection of the Borsellino massacre, underway in Caltanissetta. “I expect justice – he says – because my life is destroyed. I wanted to find a decent job to be able to live my family honestly, but they closed all the doors in my face. Everyone knows that Tanino Murana is innocent and that it has nothing to do with the massacre. I was a victim of justice “. And he is keen to “thank with all his heart” his lawyer, the lawyer Rosalba Di Gregorio who has assisted him for many years. “She fought like a lion for me,” he says. “How come no one else …”. (by Elvira Terranova)