“Massacres”, the mafia bombs in the essay by Lirio Abbate 30 years after the massacres of Capaci and via D’Amelio

Thirty years after the mafia massacres in Capaci and via D’Amelio, journalists, magistrates and historians question the events of then and today, analyzing what happened and wondering what is happening now. Because even if the mafia no longer shoots, this does not mean that it has disappeared: it has just sunk. The latest essay by Lirio Abbate, editor of Espresso, who dedicated “Stragisti” (Rizzoli publisher) to the men and women of the mafia bombs, is presented today in Rome, at the Feltrinelli bookshop in Piazza Colonna. Not to the victims, this time, but to the direct and indirect executioners, to those who gave the orders and to those who carried them out. From Giuseppe Graviano to Matteo Messina Denaro Abbate – author of numerous journalistic investigations on mafias and collusion of politicians with bosses – examines ” the years of blood “. A dramatic period that he himself lived as a reporter in Sicily. (continued) Between 1992 and 1993 Cosa Nostra waged a war against the State: on 23 May ’92 in Capaci, “the attackatuni” against Giovanni Falcone. Fifty-seven days later, in via D’Amelio, Paolo Borsellino dies, the five people in the escort die. A year later, again in May, the failed attack on Maurizio Costanzo at the Parioli Theater in Rome and a few days later, in Florence, the massacre in via dei Georgofili. And then again the bomb in via Palestro, in Milan: this is the chronicle. Behind the sparse chronology of events, there are the strategies of the nineties mafia and a “family photo” that the author, thanks also to unpublished documents and secret stories, recomposes. It is the close-up portrait of the “Massacres”, men and women who, under the influence and orders of the Chief of Chiefs, Totò Riina, have bloodied Sicily and the whole country. The two Graviano brothers, Giuseppe and Filippo, are at the center of this story, flanked by their “different twin”, Matteo Messina Denaro. The first two will be arrested in 1994 and their arrest will coincide with the end of the massacre strategy. The second, still a fugitive, is the last custodian of the secrets of that season. (continues) Today, thirty years after events that have remained in the collective memory of the country, “Stragisti” takes us back to the streets of Palermo, Florence, Milan and Rome, the Adriatic coast and Tuscany, where “the bosses moved almost undisturbed “as Abbate explains. And he reveals the mechanisms of power within the Graviano family, sheds light on the mysteries of a golden fugitive and on the role of his sister, Nunzia, to the point of seeking an answer to an absurd question. How did it happen, in fact, that two bosses at 41bis both had a child during their detention? It is precisely on the impedimental prison that the director of Espresso has waged battle: according to the Cartabia reform in progress, the Graviano brothers, lifers, could soon return to freedom, thirty years after the massacres for which they were condemned. Tonight’s meeting is with Francesco Vitale and Alfondo Sabella, while tomorrow at the Feltrinelli del Duomo in Milan, the journalist will talk about his essay with Francesca Fagnani and Nando dalla Chiesa.