Dec 28 2007
Son of mafia Boss of bosses gets sentence reduced on appeal
Palermo - An appeals court in the Sicilian city of Palermo has sentenced Giuseppe Salvatore Riina, youngest son of jailed mafia boss Toto Riina, to eight years and 10 months in prison for mafia association. The court reduced the 14 year jailterm originally handed down to Giuseppe in 2004.
Palermo judges ruled that Giuseppe must serve his sentence behind bars, as must two other convicted mafia members, Antonino Bruno and Illiano Baiamonte, sentenced to 7 years and four months, and 5 years respectively, the Giornale di Sicilia newsaper reports.
Giuseppe Riina was jailed for his leading role in an extortion and money-laundering gang that controlled public works contracts.
His father Toto, nicknamed “the Beast” for his brutality, was arrested in 1993 and has been convicted on more than 100 counts of murder.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Riina and mafia associates from his hometown of Corleone waged a ruthless campaign of violence against both rival mobsters and the Italian state which culminated in the assassination of two anti-Mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and his colleague Paolo Borsellino in 1992.
Falcone and Borsellino’s murders sparked widespread public revulsion towards the mafia and led to a major crackdown by the authorities, resulting in the capture and imprisonment of Riina and many of his associates.
Mafia arrests are ongoing in Italy. Toto Riina’s successor as the mafia ‘Godfather’, Bernardo Provenzano, was arrested last year after over 40 years on the run.
Provenzano’s replacement, Salvatore Lo Piccolo, and his son Sandro, were arrested in early November as they attended a meeting of the Cosa Nostra ‘cupola’ - or the governing body of the Sicilian mafia - in an isolated villa outside Palermo.
Son of mafia Boss of bosses gets sentence reduced on appeal - 28 Dec. 2007 - AKI - http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1713353245
