Taking on the Mafia
"While in Rome they pondered what to do, the city of Saguntum was vanquished by enemies," intoned an impassioned Salvatore Cardinal Pappalardo, borrowing a line from the Roman historian Sallust. In his own words, Pappalardo added: "Yet this time it is not Saguntum, but Palermo! Our poor Palermo!"
It was the harshest indictment yet of the Rome government's inability to halt the epidemic of brutal criminal violence that has gripped Italy in recent years. The Archbishop of Palermo was presiding over a highly emotional memorial service for Carabinieri General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, the appointed prefect of Palermo, who had arrived in May to spearhead the government's efforts to clean up the Sicilian Mafia. The day before, Dalla Chiesa, 62, and his bride of less than two months, Emanuela Setti Carraro, 32, were slain in downtown Palermo during an ambush by presumed Mafia hitmen.
The cold-blooded murder of Dalla Chiesa, who was widely known and respected for his part in the fight against Italy's Red Brigades terrorists, stunned Italians. Mourners at Palermo's ornate Basilica of San Domenico pelted Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolini and members of his Cabinet with coins and jeered them for their failure to act more effectively against criminal bloodshed.
Stung by the public outcry, the government moved with uncharacteristic swiftness. Two days after the memorial service, President Sandro Pertini signed a decree that invested sweeping investigative powers in the newly created post of high commissioner against organized crime. By midweek the Parliament had passed a set of anti-Mafia laws that Dalla Chiesa had pleaded for, without success, prior to his death.
The legislation will give the government broad authority to do battle with Sicily's deeply entrenched Mafia. The new high commissioner is empowered to tap telephones of suspected gangsters and to look into bank records to trace transfers of capital. Another new statute allows interrogation of witnesses behind closed doors, a provision calculated to break Sicily's code of omertà, a vow of silence by those who have witnessed crimes.
Before his death, Dalla Chiesa expressed his goal: "I don't speak of beating [the Mafia], only of containing them." In addition to its new authority, the government will have a powerful implement that it has until now lacked: the overwhelming public support that has come only in the aftermath of Dalla Chiesa's death.