ABSTRACT: The author agrees with the sentence that acquitted Liggio for lack of proof. It is a good sign that indicates "adherence to civil rights, the law, and the constitution". He however still feels that the "maxi-trials" are "a danger for the administration of justice". The structure of the inquiry for the trial held up to the test, but what did not hold up was the "theory of the cupola", otherwise called the "Buscetta theorem". The Mafia is not a single organisation, but a sort of "confederation of Mafias" often in conflict with each other, and this despite the fact that Michele Greco is called the Mafia "Pope". At best it is a question of a schismatic "Pope", a schismatic Mafia which today finds it convenient "for shelter to be given in the country's prisons to people who, if free, they would be obliged to eliminate". The proof of this is the murder of Antonino Ciulla who has just left prison after being acquitted.

(CORRIERE DELLA SERA, December 27, 1987)

I confess that I left the only hearing of the "maxi-trial" I ever attended with a sense of dismay. It was one of those days when Buscetta was answering lawyers' questions; and except for Buscetta who answered with complete calm and precision, everything was confusion. Fierce doubts assailed me concerning the way the trial was being conducted and how it was going. And I believe I also wrote something for this paper. But what I have learned about the sentence today cancels those old impressions. The sentence does not appear to be the result of confusion. On the contrary, one notes in it that adherence to civil rights, to law and to the constitution which fanatics would like to see fall into disuse. And it would be enough just to consider Liggio's acquittal which seems to me more important than the conviction of others.

The entire legend that surrounds this individual, all the things attributed to him by the newspapers, all the serious suspicions that regard him (and which I too share) did not seem to the court sufficient for pronouncing his conviction. A reassuring verdict for anyone who still is on the side of civil right, and it almost rises to the sign of the tabula rasa the judges were capable of making of the prejudices outside the courtroom which were quite noisy and pressing. While recognising this, I still do not back down from my opinion that the "maxi-trials" are a peril for the administration of justice, if one has any idea of justice. The structure of the inquiry held up to the test of the trial, but what did not hold up - nor could it have - was the theory of the "cupola", otherwise called the "Buscetta theorem". I have never believed the Mafia to be a strong single and pyramid structure, and I think that the belief in this produces deviations, risks, and the giving way to facile and momentary satisfactio

ns (such as are to be noted in the media as a result of the outcome of this trial).

My opinion has always been that the Mafia is a confederation of Mafias that sometimes live in peace, sometimes in agreement, and sometimes in conflict with each other. Conflicts which one can easily believe result precisely from the will to commit a breach of trust, to expand, and to overthrow the federation's balance in the effort to turn it into a unified and totalitarian state. (Obviously the terminology we use is only approximate.)

The fact that the verdict recognises Michele Greco as "the Pope" does not mean there are no other popes, anti-popes and black popes; and he has in fact had the terrible fate of being, on the inside of that Mafia whose head he is said to be, "the Pope" of a schismatic event so new and serious in the history of the Mafia, as to find himself faced with a kind of alliance of schismatics and the laws of the state. An unheard of thing and - one hopes - one that will not be of any advantage, other than provisional, and other than precarious, for the schismatics.

One can try to find a brief and clear definition of that advantage, the degree of whose provisional and precarious nature will depend upon the degree to which the defenders of the law and the public are aware of it. The schismatic Mafia has found it to be to their advantage that many of those people are being held for shorter or longer periods in the country's prisons who, if they were free, they would be obliged to eliminate at some cost and risk to themselves. A proof of that we have already had in the elimination of the "confidante" who made it possible to capture Michele Greco, an act which has generally been considered a vendetta by "the Pope" and instead was to be ascribed to an attempt to worsen his judicial position. And today there is a water-tight proof in the murder of Antonino Ciulla on the very evening in which he was acquitted and freed from prison. Which may have also been a vendetta, but which is mainly to be understood as telling the court that acquitted him: "You have done a good thing

for the others, but you have made a mistake with him". And these considerations of mine may seem paradoxical (which I do not intend in the least as criticisms of the trial's validity and correctness), but I entrust their validity to time, and there will not be long to wait.