Allegations of political influence Prior to Riina's faction becoming the dominant force on the island, the Sicilian Mafia were based in Palermo, where they controlled large numbers of votes, enabling mutually beneficial relationships with local political figures such as mayors of Palermo
Vito Ciancimino and
Salvatore Lima. Ciancimino, who was born in
Corleone, corruptly allowed untrammelled property development on the well-known valley known as the "Golden Bowl" (''
Conca d'Oro''), amassing a vast fortune in the process. Lima granted a valuable monopoly concession on tax collection to Mafia businessman
Ignazio Salvo, and was instrumental in
Rome-based
Giulio Andreotti becoming a force in national politics. In his turn, Salvo acted as financier to Andreotti. These connections caused some to suspect that Riina had forged similar links with Andreotti, although the courts acquitted Andreotti of associations with the Mafia after 1980.
Baldassare Di Maggio alleged that Riina met with the then Prime Minister Andreotti at Salvo's home in 1987 and greeted him with a "kiss of honour". Andreotti dismissed the charges against him as "lies and slander … the kiss of Riina, mafia summits … scenes out of a comic horror film". Di Maggio's credibility had been shaken in the closing weeks of the Andreotti trial, when he admitted killing a man while under state protection. Appellate court judges rejected Di Maggio's testimony.
Strategy of violence and Rosario Di Salvo, murdered by the Mafia (30 April 1982) Whereas his predecessors had kept a low profile, leading some in law enforcement to question the very existence of the Mafia, Riina ordered the murders of judges, policemen and prosecutors in an attempt to terrify the authorities. A law to create a new offence of
Mafia association and confiscate Mafia assets was introduced by
Pio La Torre, secretary of the
Italian Communist Party in Sicily, but it had been stalled in parliament for two years. La Torre was murdered on 30 April 1982. In May 1982, the Italian government sent
Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, a general of the Italian
Carabinieri, to Sicily with orders to crush the Mafia. However, not long after arriving, on the evening of 3 September 1982, he was gunned down in a drive-by shooting in the city centre with his wife,
Emanuela Setti Carraro, and his police escort, Domenico Russo. In response to public disquiet about the failure to effectively combat the organisation Riina headed, La Torre's law was passed ten days later. On 11 September 1982,
Buscetta's two sons from his first wife, Benedetto and Antonio, disappeared,
never to be found again, which prompted his collaboration with Italian authorities. This was followed by the deaths of his brother Vincenzo, son-in-law Giuseppe Genova, brother-in-law Pietro and four of his nephews, Domenico and Benedetto Buscetta, and Orazio and Antonio D'Amico. Buscetta was arrested in
São Paulo, Brazil once again on 23 October 1983, and extradited to Italy on 15 July 1984. Buscetta asked to talk to the anti-Mafia judge
Giovanni Falcone, and began his life as an informant, referred to as a
pentito.
Christmas Massacre Buscetta was the first high-profile Sicilian Mafioso to become an informant. He revealed that the Mafia was a single organisation led by a
Commission, or
Cupola (Dome), thereby establishing that the top tier of Mafia members were complicit in all the organisation's crimes. Buscetta helped judges Falcone and
Paolo Borsellino achieve significant success in the fight against
organized crime that led to 475 Mafia members indicted, and 338 convicted in the
Maxi Trial. In an attempt to divert investigative resources away from Buscetta's key revelations, Riina ordered a terrorist-style atrocity in the form of the 23 December 1984
Train 904 bombing; 17 people were killed and 267 wounded in the
Apennine Base Tunnel. It became known as the "Christmas Massacre" (
Strage di Natale) and was initially attributed to political extremists. It was only several years later, when police stumbled on explosives of the same type as used in Train 904, while searching the hideout of
Giuseppe Calò, that it became apparent that the Mafia had been behind the attack.
Assassination of Falcone and Borsellino As part of the Maxi Trial, Riina was given two
life sentences in absentia. the council of top bosses headed by Riina reacted by ordering the assassination of
Salvatore Lima (on the grounds that he was an ally of Giulio Andreotti), and Giovanni Falcone. On 23 May 1992, Falcone, his wife
Francesca Morvillo and three police officers died in the
Capaci bombing on
highway A29 outside Palermo. Two months later, Borsellino was killed along with five police officers in the entrance to his mother's apartment block by a
car bomb in
via D'Amelio. Both attacks were ordered by Riina.
Ignazio Salvo, who had advised Riina against killing Falcone, was himself murdered on 17 September 1992. The public was outraged, both at the Mafia and also the politicians who they felt had failed to adequately protect Falcone and Borsellino. The Italian government arranged for a massive crackdown against the Mafia in response. Riina was given a life sentence for each of Falcone's and Borsellino's murders, in 1997 and 1999 respectively. In July 2012, Mancino was ordered to stand trial on charges of withholding evidence about alleged 1992 talks between the Italian state and the Mafia. Some prosecutors have theorized that Borsellino's murder was connected to the alleged negotiations. In 1992, Carabinieri Colonel Mario Mori met with
Vito Ciancimino, who was close to Riina's lieutenant
Bernardo Provenzano. Mori was later investigated on suspicion of posing a danger to the state after it was alleged he had taken a list of Riina's demands that Ciancimino had passed on. Mori maintained his contacts with Ciancimino were aimed at combating the Mafia and catching Riina, and there had been no list. Mori also said Ciancimino had disclosed little beyond implicitly admitting he knew Mafia members, and that key meetings were after Borsellino's death. ==Capture==