Savina, the super policeman who took Brusca: “So he collaborated, today I agree with Maria Falcone”

“I find myself in the words spoken by Maria Falcone who recalls that the law on repentants was also wanted by her brother. Moreover, several prosecutors have pronounced in favor of release from prison, headed by the National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor. In short, the law was respected “. Speaking, in an interview with Adnkronos, is Luigi Savina, the former deputy chief of the police, who today, recently retired, continues to collaborate with the Security Department. It was he who arrested, on May 20, 1996, in the Cannatello district, on the outskirts of Agrigento, Giovanni Brusca, the ‘verru’, the man who on May 23 four years earlier pushed the remote control button that blew up aria Giovanni Falcone, his wife Francesca Morvillo and three escort agents. At the time there was respect for the law. He was the manager of the mobile squad, leading over 250 men, including his right-hand man, Claudio Sanfilippo, now a commissioner in Sassari. And Renato Cortese, who later became the quaestor of Palermo. Savina, speaking of the bewilderment of the families of the victims of the Capaci massacre, for the release of Brusca, says: “I am very attached to Tina Montinaro”, the widow of the foreman of Falcone, “to his son Giovanni”. “Antonio Montinaro – he says – worked with me when I was still directing the Homicide Section, but I must say that the collaborators of justice were decisive in the destruction of that Cosa Nostra we knew in those years”. Then the memory takes a step back in time and goes to that May of 1996. “Twenty days before the day of the arrest – Savina remembers – Salvatore Cucuzza, boss of the district of Palermo center, the successor of Pippo Calò, was arrested. he decided to collaborate and told us that Giovanni Brusca and Cucuzza had met. And that Cucuzza had made Brusca keep some telephone cards that we intercepted. So from that moment, for twenty days, we listened to Brusca’s phone calls. Telephony in Italy it was evolving at that time, from analog to digital, with the difficulties of intercepting and locating the GSM. Everyone at Mobile knew we were looking for Brusca but not a single word had come out, from anyone. This thing makes me proud. confirms the absolute reliability of my 250 men “. “I remember that one evening we hid our men in the Valley of the Temples, there was a concert by Noa, and we hid. We thought it was risky to intervene. On Sunday I reached Claudio Sanfilippo but we returned, and we waited for the next day”. So a strategemma was devised which turned out to be a winner. “We used a perforated, broken-down muffler – says Savina – so that it made an excessive noise. We hid in an industrial warehouse and used four vans, in which there were dozens of men. At 9 pm Renato Cortese, always extraordinary, also as a young man, he called me. He was in the operations room in Palermo. We were in absolute silence “. “Then, at 9 pm, the surreal silence. There was no buzz. Imagine 200 people in silence. All with one purpose.” “Renato Cortese gave us the alarm – Savina still remembers – my driver made a sign to start the engines of about seventy cars in the shed, a few minutes later the bike arrived with two accelerations, the noise of the bike overlapped the voices. Cortese started shouting: “He’s there, he’s there!” A moment later we intervened and captured Giovanni Brusca and his brother Enzo. ” What Luigi Savina felt at that moment: “A great satisfaction – he says – thanks to the extraordinary guys who worked as investigators during the day and in the evening went to live in the neighborhoods of Palermo, with their families. Brusca was the wanted number one, after the capture of Bagarella in 1995 he was the managing director of Cosa Nostra and Bernardo Provenzano the president “. Shortly after the turning point. “The chief prosecutor of the time Giancarlo Caselli was alerted through the director of the prison. The magistrate called me and Claudio Sanfilippo because Brusca wanted to meet us – says Luigi Savina – So we went there, it was midnight, we reached the Ucciardone prison aboard a van of the penitentiary police. And he said to us: ‘I want to collaborate’, but our collaboration was aimed at having something immediate, that is, to have news of the fugitives “. Thus began the investigative interviews and then the interrogations with the first revelations of Brusca. But what is left of that Cosa Nostra today? “That mafia we knew was destroyed – says Savina – or they are in prison or they died, this does not mean that the mafia is not dangerous. In 2018 I wanted to participate, as Deputy Chief of Police, in the Police Festival in Palermo, and I heard the intervention of the commissioner Cortese, who spoke of the danger of Cosa Nostra “. (by Elvira Terranova)