Viewpoint: Why Sicilians still turn to Mafia to settle scores

2021-06-06 16:30:01

A notorious Sicilian Mafia boss responsible for some 150 murders - Giovanni Brusca - was released last week, causing much anger in Italy. He detonated the bomb that killed Giovanni Falcone, Italy's legendary anti-Mafia judge, in 1992. Here Federico Varese, Professor of Criminology at Oxford University, describes how the Mafia - or Cosa Nostra - continues to influence Sicilian life, despite the state's successes against it in recent years. Italy's use of Mafia turncoats - so-called collaboratori di giustizia - remains a crucial tool in the fight against serious and organised crime. That tool was the brainchild of Judge Falcone. Arrested in 1996, Brusca was a key ally of Cosa Nostra boss Salvatore "Toto" Riina. But later Brusca's testimony was instrumental in key anti-Mafia investigations, magistrates noted. So what will Brusca find outside the prison walls? Is the Sicilian Mafia still a force to reckon with? Or is it a ghost of its former self? The answer is a bit of both.