May 29 2007
Mafia bosses back on trial
(AFP) ROME - Notorious Sicilian Mafia bosses Bernardo Provenzano and Toto Riina have gone back on trial from their prison cells for four gangland murders in 1969, the ANSA news agency reported.
Provenzano, 74, arrested a year ago after more than four decades on the run, is already serving around 10 life sentences.
His predecessor as Mafia supremo, Riina, 77, has been in jail since 1993 and has been sentenced to some 15 life sentences, mostly for murder.
The trial is the result of the reopening of an investigation into the 1969 murders in Palermo following information provided by a Mafia turncoat.
When Riina, nicknamed “the beast,” was arrested in 1993, Provenzano became the de facto head of the Sicilian Mafia and Italy’s most wanted man.
Riina had presided over a series of gangland wars in the 1980s and the 1992 murders of anti-Mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
The trial at the Court of Assize in Palermo opened with a request by anti-Mafia prosecutor Michele Prestipino for the testimony of several former Mafia operatives, ANSA said.
The trial is expected to last several months, with the co-defendants to be questioned by videoconference from their jail cells, Provenzano’s in northwestern Novara and Riina’s in Milan.
Provenzano is accused of taking part in the shootout of December 10, 1969, known as the Viale Lazio Massacre.
The Corleone gang would consolidate their power and become the undisputed leaders of the Cosa Nostra by the early 1980s.
AFP 29 May 2007 http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=476535
