31 Italian Mafiosi Convicted

A court here in central Sicily convicted 24 mobsters--nearly the entire ruling council of the Cosa Nostra--and sentenced them to life imprisonment Friday for the 1992 highway bombing that killed Italy’s top anti-Mafia prosecutor. Seven others received sentences ranging up to 26 years.

Among those receiving Italy’s stiffest criminal penalty was Salvatore “Toto” Riina, the Mafia’s reputed “boss of bosses,” who allegedly plotted the assassination of Giovanni Falcone.

Falcone was killed when half a ton of explosives went off on a road outside the airport in the Sicilian capital, Palermo. His wife and three police bodyguards also died in the blast.

The bombing galvanized anti-Mafia sentiment and prompted an even stiffer state crackdown in which several longtime fugitives were captured.

Falcone, a Sicilian, had revolutionized Italy’s war on the Mafia, unraveling its inner workings by tracking financial records revealing the octopus-like extent of its activities and resources and by persuading captured Mafiosi to turn state’s evidence.

The defendants in the trial, which began Feb. 21, 1995, included men whom prosecutors called the Mafia’s most ruthless leaders in recent decades.

The seven-judge panel took 25 days of deliberations to reach its verdict. Of the 41 original defendants, eight were acquitted. Two others died in prison after the trial began.

Several mobsters who had long been on the run were among those convicted. Other top bosses included Giuseppe Madonia, Benedetto Santapaola, the reputed top boss in eastern Sicily, and Leoluca Bagarella, Riina’s brother-in-law.

Investigators contend that the imprisoned bosses have continued to exercise control from behind bars, but other fugitives reputedly wield power, including Bernardo Provenzano, who was one of two bosses convicted in absentia. Only one of the bosses, Pietro Aglieri, was present to hear his life sentence.

Prosecutors relied heavily on Mafia turncoats. Among those who received easier sentences apparently in exchange for cooperation with authorities was Giovanni Brusca, who prosecutors charged pressed the remote control that triggered the bomb as Falcone’s motorcade passed over it. Brusca was given 26 years instead of the life sentence sought by prosecutors.

“In my opinion, he deserved a life sentence,” said Maria Falcone, a sister of the slain prosecutor.

Prosecutors in other cities, including Florence, where a Mafia bombing in 1993 to avenge Riina’s arrest damaged the Uffizi Gallery, have been trying to figure out if Brusca can be trusted. Maria Falcone accused Brusca of holding back information on where the Mafia keeps its vast wealth, gained from multimillion-dollar drug trafficking and extortion rackets.

The court awarded nearly $2 million in damages to relatives who had attached a civil suit to the criminal trial. The Falcone family itself took only a symbolic amount--$6.