Italy Mourns Assassinated Mafia Fighter : Crime: Politically paralyzed nation reels from yet another blow as revered judge is slain. Crowds jeer at leaders who come to pay respects.

A nation mourning a slain hero poured scorn on its humiliated and paralyzed political leaders Sunday on a day of outrage after a Mafia assassination.

“Shame! Out! Justice! Go back to Rome!” a crowd of Sicilians yelled at Italy’s acting president and two Cabinet ministers as they entered the main courthouse in Palermo to pay their respects to Giovanni Falcone, a judge who was the Mafia’s greatest enemy and who became its most illustrious victim Saturday.

The 53-year-old Falcone, his wife, Francesca, 46, also a judge, and three police bodyguards died Saturday after a ton of dynamite exploded along the highway to Palermo.

Falcone was the national symbol of a dogged attack against the Mafia in the past decade by a close-knit band of Sicilian judges defying threats and reprisals. In 1989, police found 53 sticks of dynamite wired to explode at Falcone’s beach house outside Palermo.

Outside the Palace of Justice on Sunday, thousands of shirt-sleeved Palermitani applauded for a rhythmic 10 minutes as the five flag-draped coffins were borne into the hall by the victims’ colleagues.

“Thank You, Giovanni,” read one handwritten placard fastened to a tree in Palermo. “An explosion cannot kill our will for democracy,” read one near the Pantheon in Rome denouncing the most significant Mafia killing in a decade.

When acting President Giovanni Spadolini, Justice Minister Claudio Martelli and Interior (Police) Minister Vicenzo Scotti arrived to pay their respects, the Palermo crowd greeted them with catcalls, whistles and insults.

In the aftermath of the assassination Saturday, political leaders of a new and fragmented Parliament that has failed 15 times to elect a new head of state for Italy vowed to end the impasse Sunday.

They didn’t. Parliament met Sunday, solemnly lionized Falcone and the other victims, then adjourned in mourning without a vote. The 16th presidential ballot is scheduled for today for a country that has been headed by a caretaker government since national elections in early April rebuked Establishment parties that have run the country since World War II.

“We are simultaneously confronted by three emergencies: criminal, financial and institutional. Never since the war has the life of this country come to such a dramatic and crucial point,” said Eugenio Scalfari, editor of La Repubblica, Italy’s largest newspaper.

The murder piled fuel on popular discontent over national drift that has begun to alarm Italy’s neighbors: With no government to curb official spending and an alarming deficit, Italy risks losing touch with its partners in the new Europe.

“The state is a loser; it is nonexistent,” charged the major left-wing union.

The Mafia has exacted a heavy toll on Italian magistrates, police and politicians over the past 20 years. The soft-spoken Falcone was the architect behind mass trials of Mafia members that sent hundreds of them to jail.

Last year, Falcone was reassigned from Palermo to Rome, where he and his wife lived for their safety in a small apartment within a large police barracks. But they returned to his native Palermo most weekends.

A Mafia assassination team was waiting Saturday afternoon when Falcone and his wife arrived in Palermo on an unscheduled flight in a small, official plane.

The killers had packed the explosives in a culvert under the highway road and triggered them by remote control as Falcone, his wife at his side, drove the second armored sedan in a three-car caravan. His driver, riding in the back because Falcone wanted to drive himself, was critically injured.

The explosion catapulted the lead escort car into an olive grove, killing the three young policemen. Three other cars were also destroyed, injuring three other bodyguards and four civilians: a Palermo couple and two Viennese psychiatrists.

Falcone was one of the world’s leading experts on the Mafia. But he was also a fatalist. “My account with the Cosa Nostra is still open. I will close it only with my death, natural or otherwise,” he said recently.