Italy Slicing Up the Beast

By Michael S. Serrill.

It was one of the most impressive parades of criminality ever seen in Italy. At 8 a.m. nearly 100 men in hand cuffs and chains were marched through the 150-ft. tunnel connecting Palermo's L'Ucciardone prison to a new highsecurity courtroom built on the prison grounds. Inside, the fan-shaped, green-and-white room, the defendants were herded into 30 cages at the rear. At 9:45 a.m., a bell rang, and Presiding Judge Alfonso Giordano entered in black robes to take his seat beneath a tall Crucifix. As a nationwide radio audience listened raptly, Announcer Carla Mosca intoned, "At this moment, the trial has begun."

Thus commenced the so-called monster trial, Italy's most ambitious, costly and complex attempt ever to root out the Mafia from its historic home in western Sicily. Everything about the criminal prosecution is gigantic. There are 467 defendants, variously charged with drug trafficking, Mafia membership and 90 murders in an 8,636-page indictment. More than 400 witnesses are scheduled to testify. The alleged Mobsters will be defended by a small army of some 300 lawyers. More than 3,000 extra police have been brought to Sicily to protect those involved in the trial.

The proceeding began to bog down of its own weight almost as soon as it began. Giordano and his associate judge spent much of the entire first week just wading through the formalities of enrolling the lawyers and defendants. Half a day was lost when two minor defendants collapsed in their cages with epileptic seizures. Additional time was wasted when two of the six jurors suddenly found reasons to be excused; they had to be replaced by two of ten alternates. When one defense lawyer began a windy monologue, Judge Giordano impatiently cut him off. Said Giordano: "If we have to, this court will remain in session day and night until we finish." The trial is expected to take more than a year and cost $100 million. Explained Prosecutor Giuseppe Ajala: "We were obliged to do it this way because such a huge organism of crime could not be chopped up into little pieces."

Indeed, beginning in the late 1970s "the Sicilian connection" became the chief supplier of heroin to the U.S. and Europe. Drugs have filled the Sicilian clans' coffers with billions of dollars and have been the focus of Sicilian gang wars that have killed at least 300 since 1981. The new drug Mafia has also gunned down several high-ranking Italian security officials, including General Alberto Dalla Chiesa, the prefect of Palermo who was assassinated in September 1982. Dalla Chiesa's murder resulted in a spate of new laws that led directly to the current trial. Some of those on the losing side of the gang war turned to the police for protection; 30 of them are scheduled to testify.

The most important of the turncoats are Tommaso Buscetta and Salvatore ("Toto") Contorno. They testified in December in New York City at the so- called pizza-connection trial, where 22 defendants are charged with distributing Sicilian heroin through a chain of U.S. pizza outlets. Both are expected to make court appearances in Sicily in the spring, though Contorno gave prosecutors a scare last week by suddenly threatening not to. Officials see Contorno's move as a ploy to get better treatment and more security. Nonetheless, they are visibly concerned. Contorno's statements helped indict 160 defendants.

The most dramatic moment of the opening week came when Luciano Liggio, reputedly "the boss of bosses" of the Sicilian Mob, sent a tremor through the courtroom when he stepped to a microphone at the bars of Cage 23 and boomed out, "I'm releasing my lawyers from this case!" Liggio's Mafia "family," based in the Sicilian town of Corleone (which gained notoriety in Mario Puzo's The Godfather), was the first to jump massively into the drug business. Liggio is charged with four murders and drug trafficking. His voice heavy with sarcasm, he told the court he had read that some of the accused did not deserve to be defended. Said Liggio: "I want to support that view by renouncing my defenders." Judge Giordano shot back, "The law requires you to be defended."

The Sicilian chieftain is part of an organization whose influence has spread to various levels of Italian society. Mafiosi and their friends are said to have infiltrated government, finance and dozens of legitimate businesses. In Sicily, Mob-controlled urban construction has been a bulwark of the depressed local economy. To the Sicilian unemployed, the crackdown on the Mafia appears to be a threat, and last week they continued a series of demonstrations against the trial. They waved placards saying WE WANT THE MAFIA BACK and held a brief sit-in at Palermo's 800-year-old cathedral.

Many analysts are wondering whether the expensive trial will do more than sever a few tentacles of the Mafia monster. Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi joined in the anti-Mafia fervor last month, exhorting Sicily's "honest citizens" to continue their fight against the Mob's stranglehold on their island. "The Mafia appears to be on the ropes," Craxi said confidently. "It has already been condemned by the conscience of the Sicilian people." Such brave words may buck up the spirits of wary jurors and witnesses at the Palermo maxi-trial. But Craxi and other Italian officials who cannot appear in the city's streets without phalanxes of armed guards know the battle has only just been joined.

With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof and Judith Harris/ Palermo