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Good day to you all. It seems that we have gone back to ten or fifteen years ago, when they started the first investigations into the relationship between the mafia and politics in relation to the Berlusconian environment. The characteristic that is common to those times and the present time, is that no one ever responds in relation to the merits of the issues and they always start a great kafuffle, great set phrases.


I’ll give you some examples: in the last few days there’s an attempt to respond to the new revelations that, in a few seconds, I will summarise, with arguments like: “but these turncoats are folk who have dissolved babies in acid, they are folk with twenty life sentences, they are people who have spent their whole lives killing people, they are mafia folk, how on earth can we trust them? “. In reality there is no relationship between the fact that someone has committed really serious crimes and the fact that he tells lies. There can be people who tell lies and have never committed any crime and people who speak the truth and who have spent their whole life committing crimes: anyway the fact that a turncoat is telling the truth has to be verified when he is talking about his own crimes, before he gives the names of his accomplices and the people who sent him to do the crime; usually the turncoat is one who has confessed to the crimes that we are talking about because he has said so and thanks to those confessions, he has then been convicted and sentenced to more than one life sentence, even though the law makes it possible to have modest (when the law was the one inspired by Falcone they were much more generous) discounts on the sentence and benefits while in prison.
Naturally someone could even loathe the fact that they go and listen to mafia turncoats to find out about the mafia: unfortunately they have never found anyone else, apart from the mafia people, who were able to tell what happens in the mafia, why is that? Because the mafia is a secret society, the members have a bond of absolute secrecy, and obviously they cannot even say to the world that they are mafia people, they cannot even say that to each other, apart from in some situations that are well regulated by mafia norms and consequently, to know something about the mafia, it’s necessary to listen to mafia people. Then, naturally, you need to check up that they are speaking the truth, but it’s not a matter that because one is a mafia person, he is automatically a liar and after that in recent years we have seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of turncoats: of turncoats who have told lies there are very few, when you read in the newspapers “Let’s not forget that the turncoats are the ones who had said that Andreotti had kissed Riina”, anyway it’s a fraud, because Balduccio Di Maggio did not say that Andreotti had kissed Riina, he said something else, that is that when Andreotti went into Nino Salvo’s house and met Riina, the latter came towards him and kissed him on his cheek, thus it was Riina who greeted Andreotti with a ritual kiss and not vice versa, but in any case it’s not written down anywhere that that is a lie, there was not one of the documents explaining the sentencing of Andreotti that says that Balduccio Di Maggio was lying, it’s simply written that there was not enough evidence to establish that that meeting , that Di Maggio talked about , actually happened, but it’s not written anywhere that there is evidence that it did not happen, and as it turns out, there was no one, not even one of the 38 turncoats that accused Andreotti that has ever been convicted of calumny, which is something that would have been obligatory if the judges had found that even one of those 38 had lied and anyway, as you know and as unfortunately Eugenio Scalfari does not know, as yesterday he talked about a trial that finished with an absolution that in part had a full absolution and in part had a doubt in the absolution. There is no full absolution in the Andreotti trial, Andreotti was absolved with the old “insufficient proof” at the first level, on appeal the first level sentence was made worse, and the part for the period up until 1980 was overturned and he was declared guilty, but subject to the Statute of Limitations for the crime of association to commit crime with the mafia committed up until spring of 1980. After 1980 the absolution for insufficient evidence, given at the first level, was confirmed. The Court of Cassation confirmed the decision of the Appeal Court, so I know it is “evocative” to say “well, but those are the mafia folk who have dissolved babies in acid”: it’s true, in fact it’s really true that they are privileged witnesses to tell the story of what happened inside the mafia, because they are a part of it; certainly, it would be great to be able to have mafia witnesses who have always been, throughout their whole lives, Franciscan monks or Poor Clare nuns, but unfortunately the Franciscan monks and the Poor Clare nuns know nothing of the mafia, because they have never been part of it and consequently, it is obvious that, to know what is happening in a criminal organisation, we need to hope that someone on the inside of that criminal organisation tells us the story. Anyway, you see, for any crime that is committed they go and look for the people closest to the victim and when they discover that there’s a criminal organisation, they go and look for all the people who are part of that criminal organisation, in the hope that one of them will collaborate with the judges. If you are attentive, the role of the turncoat in reality does not exist: who is the turncoat? The turncoat is a criminal who, when he is captured, when he is discovered, has two possible routes, the first is to deny everything and keep his secrets to himself and to cover up for his accomplices, his bosses and the brains behind the crimes; the other is to reply to the questions of the magistrates and to tell the truth. In all the countries of the world, those who reply to the questions of the magistrates tell the truth, but not just the mafia people, even a member of an organisation devoted to kidnapping, theft, clandestine immigration, terrorism etc. Anyone who responds and tells the truth has extenuating circumstances, rewards, why?

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