A mafia boss nicknamed “the Pig” who killed a famous prosecutor and dissolved a boy’s body in acid was released from jail on Monday, sparking outrage across Italy. Giovanni Brusca, 64, left Rome’s Rebibbia prison after a 25-year sentence, during which he became a state witness. He will now serve four years of probation. “Brusca freed – the cruellest boss,” read La Repubblica daily.His release was condemned by politicians and relatives of his victims, although others defended it given his co-operation with the authorities. In 1992, Brusca detonated the bomb that killed Giovanni Falcone, Italy’s legendary prosecuting magistrate who dedicated his career to overthrowing the mafia.
Mr Falcone’s wife and three bodyguards were also killed in the attack after their car drove over a section of motorway packed with 400 kilograms of explosives outside Palermo. The bomb was detonated by Brusca near by. Tina Montinaro, the wife of one of the bodyguards killed, told Repubblica she was “indignant” at Brusca’s release. “The state is against us,” Ms Montinaro said. “After 29 years we still don’t know the truth about the massacre and Giovanni Brusca, the man who destroyed my family, is free.” He was one of the most loyal operators of the head of Cosa Nostra, Salvatore Toto Riina, “the Beast” who died behind bars in 2017.
Arrested in 1996, Brusca decided to co-operate with the authorities, admitting to hundreds of murders, Italian media reported. One of the most grisly was that of Giuseppe Di Matteo, 12, the son of a mafia turncoat, who was kidnapped in 1993 in retaliation for his father having collaborated with authorities. After being held in a house for more than two years in squalid conditions, the boy was strangled and his body thrown into acid in what police have called “one of the most heinous crimes in the history of the Cosa Nostra”.
“The law cannot be the same for these people,” the boy’s father, Santino Di Matteo, told the Corriere della Sera newspaper. “Brusca does not deserve anything. These people are not human.”
Mr Di Matteo recalled how Brusca “also killed a 23-year-old pregnant woman” who had nothing to do with the mafia, “after torturing her boyfriend”. He said he hoped he would never meet him on the street.
Comment here