Defiance

by Behan, Tom

  Six months later hopes rose once more when it was announced that Peppino’s case was to be re-opened. The most successful anti-Mafia magistrate, Giovanni Falcone, went to speak to Badalamenti in his US jail, but as ever Don Tano was saying nothing. So, not for the first time, in March 1990 the case was again closed. For Falcone it was a difficult time too: despite having convicted 342 Mafiosi in the 1987 ‘maxitrial’, he was often isolated within the Palermo courthouse. Not only did he escape an assassination attempt in June 1989, he was passed over for promotion and was frequently attacked in the press through a series of anonymous letters, probably written by one of his fellow magistrates.

  In July 1990 campaigners suffered one of their most demoralising setbacks, which fittingly came from one of the most tainted leaders of the Christian Democrats, the Neapolitan Antonio Gava. Ignoring the 1984 court verdict, as minister of the interior he announced that because Peppino had not been killed by the Mafia, his family was therefore not entitled to compensation as Mafia victims. It wasn’t that the family wanted to get rich, they had always said they would use the money to educate people to break free from the Mafia. What made such a decision so outrageous was that Gava was commonly held to be close to the Neapolitan Mafia, the Camorra.

  A further setback was to follow in February 1992. Probably influenced by the scale of Riina’s violence, another court verdict stated that it was unlikely that Badalamenti was involved in Peppino’s murder – it was much more likely to have been the Corleonesi. In any event, the case was closed again because no new evidence had been found.

  But in the very same month a sequence of events began at the other end of Italy that would unleash a tidal wave of political change, destroying Christian Democrat dominance, and with it, the cosy relationship the Mafia had enjoyed with them.

  The Floodgates Open

  One day in February 1992 a virtually unknown magistrate, Antonio Di Pietro, organised the arrest for bribery of an equally unknown Socialist Party hospital manager in Milan. Mario Chiesa was caught red-handed taking a bribe worth £4,000 from the businessman who hoped to win the cleaning contract for his hospice. When the police burst into his office, Chiesa was trying to flush the equivalent of £9,000 down the toilet from his previous appointment. After his arrest he admitted to demanding bribes for every contract he awarded, from cleaning to meat supplies. The poor meat supplier had started with giving Chiesa the occasional gift, then in the early 1980s the bribes grew to silver plateware and works of art, and then Chiesa began demanding works by specific artists. The people who died in the hospice were then farmed out by Chiesa to another Socialist colleague, who in turn demanded a rake-off from funeral parlours for the right to bury them. The price per dead body was about £50.

  Chiesa quickly implicated other Socialist politicians in Milan, such as Bettino Craxi, prime minister for much of the 1980s. From Milan investigations spread to Rome, and quickly the Christian Democrats were found to be up to their necks as well. Over the next two years – day after day, week after week, month after month – scandal after scandal emerged, and party after party disintegrated due to mass arrests or a collapse in their votes.

  The party that had been at the heart of Italian government since 1945 was collapsing, and this produced huge instability in Sicily; the Mafia no longer had a reliable political structure from which they could demand protection in exchange for votes. Not for the first time, Riina and the Corleonesi decided to attack the state head-on, just to remind people in power that they still had to reckon with the Mafia. But this was at a time when the Christian Democrats no longer had support from their electorate – support for the political system was at an all-time low.

  The anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone was the first to be killed, in May 1992. A massive bomb exploded underneath the motorway between the airport and Palermo, just as his car was passing, killing him, his wife, and three members of his police escort. Six weeks later his long-time partner, the second most successful anti-Mafia magistrate – Paolo Borsellino – also died in a car bomb. Both these funerals became mass events where the people of Palermo, and some police officers, vented their anger on a political class that had allowed the Mafia to grow so powerful. On one memorable occasion, mourners inside Palermo Cathedral, many of them police officers whose colleagues had died as part of these magistrates’ armed escort, jostled the head of state and the chief of police, while outside the crowd chanted, referring to these individuals, ‘Mafia out of the cathedral’.

  The ‘Palermo spring’ had begun. Leoluca Orlando, an anti-Mafia politician, became mayor of Palermo with an unprecedented majority in 1993. Far more important than that was the fact that public opposition to the Mafia grew, street committees were formed, and many did not disappear after the first emotional outbursts. In essence, a new generation of anti-Mafia activists had emerged. Sicily had changed, forever.

  Back in her house in Cinisi, Felicia Impastato, although she could not speak standard Italian and did not go out and get involved in these events, also understood things were different: ‘Something changed after the death of Borsellino and Falcone . . . people started to understand and think, “So when they killed Peppino, it was for the same reason!” . . . He might have been just a nipper, them lot was judges and grown-ups. Only then did they understand that in Cinisi you needed loads of Peppinos.’

  In Palermo an unexpected stroke of luck also occurred one day in 1992. As part of their activities at the Peppino Impastato Research Centre Umberto Santino and his wife Anna Puglisi run a press-monitoring service and give their clients a daily round-up of Mafia-related news. One day Puglisi noticed an article that mentioned a new Mafia supergrass named Salvatore Palazzolo, from Cinisi. He was helping magistrates with other cases, but Santino and Puglisi suggested to the Impastato family lawyer that he ask magistrates to interview Palazzolo about the Impastato case, given that he was a member of Badalamenti’s gang. In some ways the signs weren’t promising, as after a while it transpired that Palazzolo was only cooperating with the authorities because he knew Riina wanted to kill him. In other words, he hadn’t decided to make a clean breast of all he knew because he had seen the error of his ways, so he was not cooperating across the board.

  Meanwhile, the battle for justice was slowly beginning to gain support in a wider context. In November 1994 Palermo council named a street after Peppino, very near to the main jail. Two further events occurred in May 1995: first the Palermo provincial council passed a motion demanding the reopening of the Impastato case and secondly the Terrasini sea front was named after Peppino – only for the road signs to be ripped down less than a month later. Finally, in May 1996, 18 years after his death, Cinisi council finally named a street after Peppino.

  The wheels of the Italian justice system grind outrageously slow. Following further sworn statements and dossiers from Santino’s research centre and from the family, Peppino’s case was opened again in February 1996. The following month the same people demanded an investigation into the police, accusing them of perverting the course of justice. Things were lumbering forward: a year later Judge Gian Carlo Caselli announced that he was considering bringing Badalamenti to trial as the instigator of Peppino’s murder. Some things never changed though; a few days later threatening graffiti appeared in Cinisi and other areas nearby, attacking Judge Caselli.

  Finally, nearly twenty years after Peppino’s death, it was announced that Gaetano Badalamenti would be brought to trial for ordering his murder, and much of the evidence would in fact be provided by the supergrass Salvatore Palazzolo. Felicia and Giovanni Impastato had a poster put up in Cinisi immediately. While welcoming the news, it also criticised:

  the heading-off of investigations by the police who, instead of helping to find those responsible, did everything they could to destroy Peppino’s reputation and make his fellow comrades guilty.

  We demand that everything comes out, bringing Badalamenti to trial immediately and dealing with all those who for twenty years have held back the s
earch for truth.

  With its big, bold black typeface, it was a real slap in the face for the police officers who had protected the Mafia, and a clear provocation in such a Mafia town. The family had not forgiven or forgotten the often-lonely battle they had been forced to fight.

  One of the people keenest to give evidence was Giovanni Riccobono. Back in 1978 he had told magistrates that on the evening of Peppino’s death his cousin had told him not to go back to Cinisi: ‘because something big was going to happen’. The fact that his cousin knew what was going to happen beforehand clearly implicated him directly or indirectly. This was yet another shock for Cinisi – somebody breaking ranks with the deeply held notion of family solidarity. Riccobono himself recounts what happened next:

  the opinion that many people had of me in town totally changed. This was because after, hearing the magistrate had issued an arrest warrant against my cousin – even within my family people took a really bad view of me, saying I had betrayed my family. More than once my father wanted to kick me out, but my mother and brothers agreed with the stance I had taken.

  The real reason I left town for a few weeks was that when I’d walk past people on the street I’d hear them mumble ‘grass’.

  When he returned to Cinisi he went to see Peppino’s mother, who drew his hand over her heart: ‘Giovanni, I’ve lost a son. If you don’t feel up to it, don’t go down that road – I’ll always love you whatever you do.’

  She had the same reaction 20 years later: When Felicia heard I was going to testify in Palermo and confirm all that I had said 20 years earlier, when I was at her house she took me into the back room. Then she took me by the hand and said that if I didn’t feel up to testifying against Gaetano Badalamenti she wouldn’t hold it against me.

  But perhaps the person who was most anxious to go to court was Peppino’s mother. Felicia finally got her day in court in October 2000, 22 years after the death of her son. Now aged 84, she could hardly walk and sometimes misunderstood what she was being asked. But when she found an outlet for her anger, she was direct and defiant: ‘They smashed his skull with rocks then they took him to the railway track putting a bomb around him here, as if he was a terrorist. But it was the Mafiosi who were the terrorists.’ Her son Giovanni summed up how the tables had been turned in all these years, and showed how his confidence had grown, telling Badalamenti: ‘My brother has turned you into a small-town wanker.’

  Don Tano was looking and listening on a video link from his jail in the US. As ever, he was as silent as the grave. Felicia looked up at the screen and said: ‘that man murdered my son’. Her deposition was an extremely fraught moment: she was a vital witness for the prosecution, so if she gave unreliable testimony it could be a serious blow to the whole case. The defence lawyer did the work he was paid to do, trying to lay traps and get her to contradict herself, showing that she couldn’t distinguish between fact and her own imagination. But she got through the test, and the evidence started to pile up against Badalamenti.

  Felicia couldn’t make the trip to hear the verdict 18 months later, having recently been diagnosed with asthma. Many people did make a special effort to get to the courthouse though; a demonstration called by the Palermo Social Forum against the Berlusconi government decided to stop protesting and go instead to the prison courtroom to hear the verdict. Don Tano had already let it be known he would not listen to the verdict, so the video link with his New Jersey jail was switched off. Badalamenti received his first conviction in an Italian court for 33 years – a life sentence for having organised Peppino’s murder.

  Giovanni was in court to hear the verdict. Despite his customary good manners, he could not hide his anger about the people who were equally responsible for almost a quarter of a century of torment:

  I feel angry, because getting to the truth after 25 years, when we could have reached it immediately, makes you angry . . . it makes me angry to know that there are men in the institutions who have been accomplices in perverting the course of justice. Our task now is to continue the work done over these years with the Peppino Impastato Research Centre, and to continue searching for the truth about what happened.

  The harsh reality behind this long-delayed conviction was devastating for the authorities. It had been obtained for two reasons alone: first it was thanks to long-term campaigning, which was often ignored or discouraged by the authorities; secondly it was due to the testimony of supergrasses. From the moment when Peppino’s friends and comrades fought off the crows to collect his remains, the police in particular had ignored what even the leaves of Cinisi knew.

  The Hundred Steps

  The authorities managed to save some face in late 2000. Nearly two years earlier, parliament’s permanent AntiMafia Commission had set up a committee to investigate the ‘Impastato case’. It heard dozens of witnesses and examined hundreds of documents in its many sittings, and although it presented a stark picture of police incompetence and what was in essence protection of the Mafia, it did not have legally binding powers.

  Yet, in a surprising departure from normal parliamentary procedure, out of respect for the family’s long years of campaigning, the committee decided to deposit the official copy in the Impastato household. Felicia hugged the three members of the commission who came to deliver it, whispering in their ears in Sicilian: ‘Today you have brought Peppino back to life.’ All three men, professional politicians for decades, broke down in tears.

  In terms of public exposure, this event paled into insignificance compared to something else that had emerged a few weeks earlier, the release of a film on Peppino’s life entitled I cento passi, (The Hundred Steps).

  The film was made on quite a low budget. The director was not particularly famous, and most of the cast were Sicilian actors largely unknown to Italian cinema audiences. Named after the distance between the Impastatos’ and Don Tano’s house on the Corso, The Hundred Steps was a huge artistic, commercial and political success. It became the second-largest grossing Italian film of the last 10 years, essentially due to word-of-mouth recommendations.

  It won a Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival for best screenplay; indeed, such was the interest in the film – shown also throughout the country in schools and at trade union festivals – that even the screenplay quickly sold 100,000 copies in paperback before the DVD became available. The director and crew had received a lot of help from the Impastato family and people who had campaigned for justice for so long. In the final scene of Peppino’s funeral many of the extras were people who had been at his real funeral back in 1978. Fittingly, the director gave his award to Peppino’s mother.

  The film’s huge success meant that the annual commemorations in May became much bigger. In 2002 over a thousand people marched from Carini to Cinisi, a distance of ten miles that took over three hours – but once again most doors and windows stayed shut as it passed through town. As the march passed Don Tano’s house on the Corso somebody ran out and wrote on it: ‘you stupid and ignorant murderer – thank you Peppino’. Three whole days of meetings and cultural events were organised, in an event that was now globalised; many marchers were carrying Palestinian flags. One of the speakers, Haidi Giuliani, whose son Carlo had been killed by the police at a demonstration in Genoa the year before, reminded people that there had been many Peppinos and Carlos.

  The following year a different kind of problem arose: the local archbishop ‘forgot’ about the anniversary march, held every year for the last 25 years, and declared that celebrations of the patron saint of the town would be held on the same day. The authorities now had a problem – would they allow just one march or both? Giovanni said that the commemoration ‘will happen anyway, even without authorisation’. The family released a statement saying that Mafiosi: ‘are not only those who shoot, but also those who want to erase the memory of those who have fought the Mafia until their last breath’. The archbishop’s procession was held on another date.

  Felicia was now too frail to leave her house,
and would greet supporters from her doorstep. Her favourite month of the year was May, as many more people would visit and remember what her son had stood for. In many ways her life’s work was over, but people wouldn’t stop knocking on her door: from Boy Scouts to politicians, it was literally ‘open house’ at the Impastatos. By speaking out, Felicia and Giovanni had broken a taboo, by trusting strangers their behaviour was the very opposite of a Mafia family. She once commented on journalists’ expectations of meeting her: ‘They think beforehand: “She’s Sicilian, she won’t say very much.” On the contrary, I have to defend my son, I have to defend him politically. My son wasn’t a terrorist, he fought for very concrete and positive things.’

  Entering the house, you would now hear her before you saw her, as she came shuffling out of her bedroom in the back. The tapping on the floor was caused by Felicia moving a kitchen chair in front of her for support: the Impastatos were not rich, there was no point in buying an expensive Zimmer frame when an old wooden chair would do just as well. Her mind and face were far more lively than her body, now bent by age. What characterised her expression more than anything else was her sweet but determined smile, which often verged on a sarcastic smirk when she wanted to stress a point she thought you hadn’t understood.

  As Cinisi’s Mafiosi died off one by one, over more than twenty years she often drank to their death. One day at the end of April 2004 Salvo Vitale raced to her house to bring her a bit of news, and to ask her whether she wanted to raise a glass to the death of Badalamenti. Age had not slowed her down, as she told him: ‘My son, when I heard that pig had died, I finished the bottle.’

  The following day she was as incisive as ever, talking to the press: ‘I want to know the names of those who helped him for so many – too many – years. Mafiosi, politicians and some policemen were all in on it together. And together they misled investigations into Peppino’s murder. Why are judges hesitating about starting new investigations?’