Everything about Paolo Borsellino totally explained
Paolo Borsellino (
January 19,
1940 -
July 19,
1992) was an
Italian anti-
Mafia magistrate who was killed by a Mafia car bomb in
Palermo, less than two months after his friend and fellow anti-Mafia magistrate
Giovanni Falcone had been killed by the Mafia.
Biography
Born in a middle-class
Palermo neighbourhood,
la Kalsa, Borsellino obtained a degree in law at the
University of Palermo, with honors, in
1962. Then, after his father's death, he passed the judging exam in
1963. During those years, he worked in many cities in
Sicily (
Enna in 1965,
Mazara del Vallo in
1967,
Monreale in
1969). After he married in
1968, he transferred to his native Palermo in
1975 together with
Rocco Chinnici, where he then started his unfinished work to fight and defeat the growing Sicilian
Mafia.
His accomplishments included the arrest of six organization members in
1980; in the same year, one of his workmates, the
Carabinieri captain
Emanuele Basile, was murdered by the Mafia. Because of that event, he was assigned police protection.
During those years, working together with Magistrates
Giovanni Falcone and
Rocco Chinnici, Borsellino continued his research about the Mafia and its links to political and economical powers in Sicily and Italy. In
1983,
Rocco Chinnici was killed by a bomb in his car. His place in the
Antimafia Pool was taken by
Antonino Caponnetto. In
1986, Borsellino became head of the Procure of
Marsala, continuing there his personal campaign against the Mafia bosses, in the most populated city of the province of
Trapani. His links with Giovanni Falcone, who remained in Palermo, allowed him to cover the entire Western Sicily for investigations. In
1987, after Caponnetto resigned due to illness, Borsellino was protagonist of a great protest about the unsuccessful nomination of his friend Giovanni Falcone as head of the Antimafia Pool.
In
1992, after five years of battling the Mafia, Borsellino was killed by a car bomb in Via D'Amelio, Palermo, less than two months after the death of his good friend Falcone. The bomb attack also claimed the lives of five policemen: Agostino Catalano, Walter Cosina, Emanuela Loi, Vincenzo Li Muli, Claudio Traina. In recognition of their efforts in the anti-Mafia trials, he and
Giovanni Falcone were named as heroes of the last 60 years in the
November 13,
2006 issue of
Time Magazine.
In his last video interview, given on
May 21,
1992 to Jean Pierre Moscardo and Fabrizio Calvi, he spoke about the possible link between Cosa Nostra's mafiosi and rich Italian businessmen such as future Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi. The interview received surprisingly scarce visibility in the Italian television up to present; as of 2007, it was aired only one time by satellite channel
RaiNews 24 in 2000, in a shorter version of 30 minutes long (it is 50 minutes long in its original form).
Salvatore Riina, the head of the
Corleonesi Mafia Family, is now serving a life sentence in prison for sanctioning the murders of Borsellino and Falcone, as well as for many other crimes.
Paolo Borsellino today is considered as one of the most important magistrates killed by the Sicilian Mafia during the 1980s and 1990s, and he's remembered as one of the main symbols of the battle of the State against the Mafia.
Many schools and public building were named after him, including the
Palermo International Airport (now known as
Falcone-Borsellino Airport). A memorial by local
sculptor Tommaso Geraci is there.
His sister
Rita ran as
centre-left presidential candidate in the
2006 regional election, after having won the regional
primary election, but lost to incumbent
Salvatore Cuffaro.
Further Information
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