Cesare Terranova

Judge Cesare Terranova

Cesare Terranova (Palermo, August 15, 1921 – Palermo, September 25, 1979) was a magistrate and politician from Sicily notable for his anti-Mafia stance. From 1958 until 1971 Terranova was an examining magistrate at the Palermo prosecuting office. He was one of the first to seriously investigate the Mafia and the financial operations of Cosa Nostra. He was killed by the Mafia in 1979. Cesare Terranova can be considered as the predecessor of the magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino who were also killed by the Mafia in 1992.

Career

In the 1960s, Terranova helped bring numerous Mafiosi to trial and subsequent imprisonment. At the time the prosecution was separated in an examining phase (the so-called instruction phase) and a prosecuting phase. Terranova led the examining office. He was a key figure in the Trial of the 114 which saw many prominent Mafiosi on trial for their role in the First Mafia War in the early 1960s that ended with the Ciaculli massacre on June 30, 1963. On May 31, 1965, he ordered the prosecution of 114 mafiosi.

However, despite Terranova’s efforts, the sentence of the Trial of the 114 on December 22, 1968, by the Court of Catanzaro was a disappointment and many prominent mafiosi were acquitted. All but 10 of the 114 defendants were acquitted. Angelo La Barbera got 22 years and Tommaso Buscetta 14 years for two so-called “white deaths” - the so-called lupara bianca which is used to refer to a mafia-style murder in which the victim's body is deliberately hidden.

Terranova was the first to acknowledge the existence of a Sicilian Mafia Commission. He based himself on a confidential report of the Carabinieri of May 28, 1963, where a confidential informant revealed the existence of a commission composed of fifteen persons – six from Palermo city and the rest from towns in the province – "each with the rank of boss of either a group or a Mafia family." Judge Terranova did not believe that the existence of a commission meant that the Mafia was a tightly unified structure.^[1]

Terranova also led investigations into the connections between the Mafia and politics. He looked into the exploits of the prominent Sicilian politician Salvatore Lima as mayor of Palermo and concluded that Lima was in league with a number of Mafiosi, including Angelo La Barbera. In an indictment in 1964, Terranova wrote: "it is clear that Angelo and Salvatore La Barbera (well-known bosses in the Palermo area) ... knew former mayor Salvatore Lima and maintained relations in such a way as to ask for favours. ... The undeniable contacts of the La Barbera mafiosi with the one who was the first citizen of Palermo ... constitute a confirmation of ... the infiltration of the Mafia in several sectors of public life."^[2] However, nothing came of his enquiries or allegations.

Prosecuting the Corleonesi

Terranova made little attempt to hide the fact that his ambition was to bring Luciano Leggio, the boss of the Corleone Mafia Family – known as the Corleonesi – to justice. In 1965 Terranova ordered the prosecution of over sixty Corleonesi, including Leggio (Trial Leggio + 63), for a series of murders in Corleone between 1958 and 1963. The most prominent victim had been the Mafia-boss of Corleone, Michele Navarra.

However, the sentence of the Bari Court on June 10, 1969, resulted in acquittals for all the 64 defendants. The jury found Leggio guilty of stealing grain in 1948, for which he received a suspended sentence, but he was pronounced not guilty on all other accounts. Salvatore Riina – Leggio's eventual successor – was acquitted in 1969 and remained at large until his capture in 1993.

The prosecution appealed successfully against the Catanzaro verdict that had acquitted Leggio and had him tried in absentia in 1970. This time Leggio was found guilty, although he had left jail after the Catanzaro trial and it was not until 1974 that Leggio was finally captured again and taken into custody.

Antimafia Commission

In May 1972 Terranova was elected as a representative in the Italian Parliament for the Independent Left under the auspices of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). He became the secretary of the Antimafia Commission that was established in 1963 after the Ciaculli massacre. He was re-elected in 1976. Terranova together with PCI deputy Pio La Torre wrote the minority report of the Antimafia Commission that was published in 1976, which pointed to links between the Mafia and prominent politicians in particular of the Christian Democrat party (DC - Democrazia Cristiana).

Terranova had urged his colleagues of the majority to take their responsibility. According to the minority report:

… it would be a grave error on the part of the Commission to accept the theory that the Mafia-political link has been eliminated. Even today the behaviour of the ruling DC group in the running of the City and the Provincional Councils offers the most favourable terrain for the perpetuation of the system of Mafia power.^[3]

However, the reports and the documentation of the Antimafia Commission were essentially disregarded. Terranova would talk of “thirteen wasted years” of the Antimafia Commission, and did not seek re-election again.

Death

The slain body of judge Cesare Terranova (Photo: Letizia Battaglia)

At the end of the legislature in June 1979, Cesare Terranova asked to be re-instated in the judiciary and was appointed as the chief examining magistrate at the Court in Palermo. However, on September 25, 1979, then aged fifty-eight, Terranova was shot to death in his car along with his driver, policeman Lenin Mancuso, who acted as his bodyguard. The combination of his investigative skills and his recent political connections in Rome would have made Terranova an even more formidable Mafia opponent than before.

Luciano Leggio was charged with ordering Terranova's murder at the Maxi Trial but was acquitted due to insufficient evidence. Leggio hated Terranova. During an interrogation preparing the Trial of the 114, Leggio refused to answer questions. When in response to one of them, Leggio replied that he could not even recall his own name or his parents, Terranova instructed the clerk: “Write that Leggio does not know whose son he is.” Leggio was infuriated with the implication that he was a bastard.^[4][5]

New Trial

In 1997 the prosecution office in Reggio Calabria re-opened the murder investigation after the pentiti Francesco Di Carlo and Gaspare Mutolo named the mafiosi Giuseppe Madonia and Leoluca Bagarella as the material killers. Di Carlo confirmed that Leggio had ordered the killing of Terranova. In 1974, when the Sicilian Mafia Commission was reorganized, Leggio through Totò Riina (Leggio was in jail) asked the Commission gathered at Michele Greco’s estate Favarella for permission. The Commission decided, on instigation of Gaetano Badalamenti, that Terranova should be killed outside Sicily, in Rome. The killing was stalled because of plans to liberate Leggio. When that failed Terranova’s murder was on the agenda again and was confirmed in June 1979 during a Commission meeting at the Favarella estate.^[6]

On January 15, 2000, Salvatore Riina, Bernardo Brusca, Bernardo Provenzano, Francesco Madonia, Pippo Calò, Nenè Geraci and Michele Greco (all members of the Sicilian Mafia Commission at the time of the murder) were convicted to life sentences for ordering the murder of Terranova (Leggio had died). However, Leoluca Bagarella, Giuseppe Madonia and Giuseppe Farinella were acquitted as the material killers. After 25 years, in October 2004, the Supreme Court confirmed the life sentences for Totò Riina, Michele Greco, Nenè Geraci and Francesco Madonia.

Cesare Terranova’s widow Giovanna would become a prominent personality in the Antimafia movement after her husband was murdered. She co-founded the first permanent civil anti-mafia organisation, the Associazione donne siciliane per la lotta contro la Mafia (Association of Sicilian Women against the Mafia).^[7] Giovanna Terranova said in an interview: "I would have felt guilty if I had stayed at home. I would have thought: Cesare died for nothing. Yes, because being killed is terrible, but being forgotten is even worse. It’s like dying twice."^[8]

Quotes

"The Mafia is oppression, arrogance, greed, self-enrichment, power and hegemony above and against all others. It is not an abstract concept, or a state of mind, or a literary term... It is a criminal organization regulated by unwritten but iron and inexorable rules... The myth of a courageous and generous 'man of honour' must be destroyed, because a mafioso is just the opposite."^[9][10]

"It is necessary to dismantle the myth of the mafioso as a brave and generous “man of honour”, since the mafioso is characterised by a totally opposite character…the mafioso shoots to the shoulder, by treachery, when he is secure to have the total control upon the victim… He is ready to any compromise, to any renunciation and to the worst mean actions in order to save himself in a dangerous situation… the consciousness that nobody will denounce him, and that hidden and influential forces will rush to his help, gives the mafioso arrogance and boldness, at least until the right and severe application of the law will reach him."^[11]

See also

• List of victims of the Sicilian Mafia

References

1. ^ Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia, p. 112
2. ^ Indictment "Angelo La Barbera +42", June 23 1964.
3. ^ Jamieson, The Antimafia, p. 22-23
4. ^ Shawcross & Young, Men Of Honour, p. 122
5. ^ Sterling, Octopus, p. 150-51
6. ^ (Italian) Omicidio Terranova: La verità di Di Carlo, Centonove, March 6, 1998
7. ^ Association Sicilian Women against Mafia, Women's Associations Facing Emergencies. Experiences from different parts of the world. Women's International Network Emergency and Solidarity,Rome, June 18–19, 2001
8. ^ Mafia and anti-Mafia. Concepts and individuals, by Renate Siebert
9. ^ Best of Sicily The Mafia
10. ^ Sterling, Octopus, p. 149
11. ^ Myths, Legends, and Affiliation Practices in the Italian Mafioso Imagery: the Local Dimension of Power of a Global Phenomenon, by Ercole Giap Parini

• Jamieson, Alison (1999). The Antimafia: Italy’s fight against organized crime, London: Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 0-333-80158-X.
• Schneider, Jane T. & Peter T. Schneider, (2003). Reversible Destiny: Mafia, Antimafia, and the Struggle for Palermo, Berkeley: University of California Press ISBN 0-520-23609-2
• Servadio, Gaia (1976). Mafioso. A history of the Mafia from its origins to the present day, London: Secker & Warburg ISBN 0-436-44700-2
• Shawcross, Tim & Martin Young (1987). Men Of Honour: The Confessions Of Tommaso Buscetta, Glasgow: Collins ISBN 0-00-217589-4
• Sterling, Claire (1990). Octopus. How the long reach of the Sicilian Mafia controls the global narcotics trade, New York: Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-671-73402-4
• Stille, Alexander (1995), Excellent Cadavers. The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic, New York: Vintage ISBN 0-09-959491-9

External links

• Italian language biography

Persondata
Name	Terranova, Cesare
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	August 15, 1921
Place of birth
Date of death	September 25, 1979
Place of death