1500 Years

One half of the bare whitewashed courtroom of Sciacca, Sicily, is taken up by three enormous cages of stout iron bars. On wooden benches inside the cages last week sat 178 scowling swarthy Sicilians, all soberly dressed. Scattered among the prisoners were a few self-conscious carabinieri fingering their white shoulder belts nervously. Entered the jury that had been deliberating for four days. "Guilty!" -- in crisp official Italian, the judge pronounced sentences.

For a series of 43 terrorist murders, 15 of the prisoners were sentenced to life imprisonment, 109 others received sentences totaling 1500 years.* A ruckus broke out that sent the pigeons fluttering from the courthouse roof, set little Sicilian donkeys braying hilariously in the nearby marketplace. Prisoners spat, screamed, bit their thumbs at the jury, howled maledictions. Resourceful Matteo Balsamo, sentenced for life, tore off his shoes, hurled them with appropriate curses through the bars of his cage at the jury. The jury kept their shoes on.

The 15 centuries of punishment that began last week marked one of the last stages in a campaign that began in May 1926 when Benito Mussolini decided that the secret terrorist organization known as the Sicilian Mafia, the "Black Hand," was a blot on the name of Italy. He commis- sioned Fascist Prefect Cesare Mori of Palermo to eradicate it.

For three years earnest Fascists scoured Sicily worming evidence from terrified farmers against the Mafia. In 1929, when the offices of Fascist Mori were jammed with evidence of more than 100 murders, the first of these great mass trials began (TIME, Oct. 24, 1927). Fascist prosecutors rushed from Rome to Sicily. In May 1929, 150 Mafisti were convicted at Termini Imerese. In January 1930, 170 more were sent to jail at Palermo. In July of the same year nine were given life sentences at Agrigento. Last week's trial nearly finishes the job.

* 15OO years ago Valentinian III was Emperor of Rome, Attila the Hun was preparing to invade Gaul.

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