The sentence of July 2020 was confirmed on appeal
At the trial for the 'Ndrangheta massacre, life imprisonment for Giuseppe Graviano and Rocco Santo Filippone
In recent weeks, during the indictment, the deputy prosecutor Giuseppe Lombardo had asked for a life sentence for both defendants

6.50pm Laura Aprati

Life imprisonment for Giuseppe Graviano and Rocco Santo Filippone. This is the verdict issued at the end of the closed session, which began this morning, by the Appeal Court of Assizes of Reggio Calabria at the conclusion of the ' Ndrangheta massacre trial. The first instance sentence issued by the Court of Assizes in July 2020 was therefore confirmed, also on appeal. In recent weeks, during the indictment, the deputy prosecutor Giuseppe Lombardo had asked for a life sentence for both defendants.

The Court of Assizes of Appeal of Reggio Calabria, chaired by Bruno Muscolo, after more than six hours in the Council Chamber, therefore confirmed the first instance sentence, considering Graviano and Filippone the instigators of the attacks on the carabinieri which took place between the end of 1993 and February of 1994 . In the second of the three ambushes, near Scilla (RC), the carabinieri Antonino Fava and Vincenzo Garofalo lost their lives (the perpetrators of the crime, Consolato Villani, who became a collaborator of justice, and Giuseppe Calabrò, have already been definitively convicted ). The appeal sentence, as well as the first instance sentence, therefore endorses the accusation hypothesis brought forward by the deputy prosecutor Giuseppe Lombardo and based on the thesis of a " total war" against the State as a "unitary decision of the 'Ndrangheta and Sicilian Cosa nostra" which resulted in the 1993 attacks in Rome, Florence and Milan and in the attacks on the carabinieri, with the aim of forcing the State to intervene, in particular, to make hard prison less afflictive in exchange for the cessation of the attacks.

Ten years of debates during which dozens of witnesses and repentants of the 'Ndrangheta and Cosa nostra (Spatuzza, Pennino, Virgilio, Fondacaro, Bruzzese, Villani and Calabrò) were questioned, who confirmed their statements, supported by the checks carried out by the investigators . A mosaic, the one put together by the Court Attorney General Giuseppe Lombardo, which highlighted the dangers that the republican institutions ran, above all with the murders of Aldo Moro, Piersanti Mattarella, Pio La Torre, Giovanni Falcone, Paolo Borsellino and the dozens of men and women of the police force, mercilessly mowed down.

In addition to the chief commissioner of the Dia Michelangelo Di Stefano , various collaborators of justice such as Girolamo Bruzzese and Marcello Fondacaro were heard in the hearings .

The Public Prosecution has sifted through numerous sentences issued by the Courts of Palermo, Reggio Calabria, and passed investigations by the Prosecutors of Catanzaro, Rome, Florence and Milan under the magnifying glass, thus managing to define "the unity of the Italian mafia phenomenon " , articulated essentially on the 'Ndrangheta, Cosa Nostra and Camorra, "capable of counting on thousands of affiliates, including in Europe, Australia and the Americas, which has managed to establish solid ties with professional classes willing to support its design, to recycle, to suggest solutions, to bribe and to kill in order to keep his own power unchanged".

Giuseppe Lombardo has identified the De Stefano, Piromalli and Mancuso "families" as the allies of the Corleonesi on the Calabrian side who, through contacts with Giuseppe Graviano, would have promoted the massacre project through the involvement of Rocco Santo Filippone and Giuseppe Calabrò, who was trained specifically to the use of the Beretta M12 machine gun, a rifle used in the three ambushes against the carabinieri between 1993 and 1994. The collaborator Consolato Villani highlighted that at the time of the disputed facts, "we went around ready to shootagainst the carabinieri at every opportunity, like that day on the highway, when we followed the Arma's gazelle, from the Palmi junction, almost as far as Scilla, to find the right moment to open fire".

The trial began in 2013 , following the conclusion of the investigations coordinated by the Deputy Prosecutor of the DDA of Reggio Calabria, Giuseppe Lombardo, who put together all the pieces that contributed to providing a judicial truth on the bloody episodes that took place in Calabria, "elements of a single criminal design - Giuseppe Lombardo has often underlined - within which deviated Masons, pieces of the infidel state, 'Ndrangheta and Cosa nostra, extremists of the neo-fascist right and enlisted members of the former Gladio, the armed Falange , who did not intend to give up their power, operated , questioned by the fall of the Berlin Wall and by the political vacuum created with the crisis of the so-called first Republic.

The sentence was supposed to arrive on March 10 but on that date an interception recorded by the carabinieri was acquired as part of the "Hybris" investigation in which a suspect, Francesco Adornato, revealed to another person some details about a meeting which took place in Nicotera where the Calabrian mafia families gave their willingness to Cosa Nostra to participate in the massacres.

The reasons for the sentence will be filed within 90 days.

"This sentence calls for an appeal to the Cassation. The entire defense continues to believe, even after this decision, in the innocence of Rocco Filippone. It only hopes that the delayed acquittal - because the Cassation will not be able to maintain this ruling - does not arrive too late. We have an innocent in prison and with life imprisonment, the fight will continue with greater and renewed commitment". So to AdnKronos the lawyer Guido Contestabile , defender, together with the lawyer Salvatore Staiano, of Rocco Santo Filippone.

"We are waiting to read the arguments used by the Court to confirm the first instance sentence. We will fight again. It's not over for us, the game is at stake. Honestly, unlike the first instance, where I expected something positive, this time I had no expectations." So to AdnKronos the lawyer Giuseppe Aloisio , defender of the boss of Brancaccio Giuseppe Graviano.