"Kill the first one you find": in Bari an innocent died killed after the boss order

Giuseppe Mizzi was killed in the central square of Carbonara on March 16, 2011. Antonio Battista, boss of the mafia clan Di Cosola, sentenced to life imprisonment because he was considered the instigator of the crime
December 14th 2017
Antonio Battista, boss of the mafia clan Di Cosola in Bari, ordered his men to respond to the ambush suffered by killing a man, "the first one you find", of the rival clan Strisciuglio. That evening, March 16, 2011, the killers by mistake fired on Giuseppe Mizzi, an innocent victim of the Mafia, mistaking him for a drug dealer. The reconstruction of that tragic event is contained in the motivations of the first degree sentence against Battista (sentenced to life imprisonment at the end of a trial with a shortened trial because he was considered the instigator of the crime) and of another 59 affiliated to the clan charged with crimes of mafia association, drugs, weapons and extortion.

For the death of Mizzi, innocent victim of the mafia, the sentence against the two material executors has already been judged, Emanuele Fiorentino and Edoardo Bove, sentenced to 20 years and 13 years and four months imprisonment respectively. The position of Battista as the principal had been filed until the statements of his wife, Lucia Masella, who after becoming a collaborator of justice had accused her husband by helping the investigators of the District Anti-Mafia Directorate, the DDA, to reopen the case.

"In the distorted and aberrant logic that moved the instigator of the murder - the gup writes in the sentence - the execution of the crime must represent the means to reaffirm the dominance of his figure, as the summit of the mafia association, after the shame suffered". Antonio Battista in the spring of 2011 had just come out of prison and was trying to regain control of the territory by reorganizing the clan. "He also had to face armed attacks", reconstructs the judge, coming to decide to "send a signal that at the same time gave account and reaffirmed his criminal rank".

On 15 March 2011 he escaped an ambush while going to the barracks to sign and was injured in one hand. He said "he would fix things"he ordered him to respond to that attack by killing someone from the rival clan. It took only 24 hours to organize and on the evening of March 16, Fiorentino and Bove killed Giuseppe Mizzi in the central square of Carbonara. "We did, but we do not know who we got," said the two to Battista after the ambush, according to reports from his wife. But they had hit the wrong target and hit an innocent, perhaps mistaking him for a drug dealer who looked like him.

http://bari.repubblica.it/cronaca/2017/1...ate_-184132646/