Via D’Amelio bombing took place on this day 33 years ago.
Italy on Saturday marks the 33rd anniversary of the murder of anti-mafia judge Paolo Borsellino who was assassinated by the Cosa Nostra in the Sicilian capital Palermo on 19 July 1992.
Borsellino was killed by a massive car bomb on Via d’Amelio, as he was about to visit his mother, along with five police officers: Agostino Catalano, Walter Cosina, Emanuela Loi, Vincenzo Li Muli and Claudio Traina.
The murder of Borsellino occurred 57 days after his friend, anti-mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone, was killed along with his wife Francesca Movillo and three police officers – Vito Schifani, Rocco Dicillo and Antonio Montinaro – in the Capaci bombing, near Palermo airport.
Borsellino and Falcone spent most of their distinguished professional careers as judges and prosecuting magistrates trying to overthrow the power of the Sicilian mafia.
Scene of the car bomb attack on Via D’Amelio, 19 July 1992.
Aftermath of Via D’Amelio bombing
Borsellino’s family refused a state funeral, with his widow Agnese accusing the government of failing to protect her husband.
The family held a private ceremony instead, expressly asking that politicians stay away.
During the funeral for the five slain police officers, angry crowds broke through the barriers and jeered the state representatives present, amid a deepening crisis of confidence in the ability of authorities to battle organised crime.
During the chaotic scenes, security services were forced to hustle Italy’s president Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, prime minister Giuliano Amato and police chief Vincenzo Parisi out of Palermo’s cathedral.
Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in an iconic photograph by Tony Gentile.
The deaths of Falcone and Borsellino resulted in a major crackdown against mafia organisations and led to the 1993 arrest of notorious Cosa Nostra godfather Totò Riina, who died in jail in 2017.
Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro – who died in 2023 eight months after his dramatic arrest after 30 years on the run – was sentenced to life in jail in absentia in 2002 over numerous murders including the killing of Borsellino and Falcone.
Italy’s president Sergio Mattarella marked the anniversary of the Via d’Amelio bombing in 2023 by saying: “That barbaric massacre, carried out with inhuman ferocity, struck the entire Italian population and remains indelible in our collective civil conscience”.
In 2022 Italy marked the 30th anniversary of the murders of Falcone and Borsellino by issuing a special €2 coin in their honour.
Below: The heart-wrenching speech by Rosaria Costa, widow of Vito Schifani, one of the police officers killed in the Via D’Amelio bombing, at his funeral. Addressing those responsible she says, “I forgive you, but you have to go down on your knees”.
