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Collaboratori Di Giustizia
''Pentito'' (; lit. "repentant"; plural: ''pentiti'') is used colloquially to designate collaborators of justice in Italian criminal procedure terminology who were formerly part of criminal organizations and decided to collaborate with a public prosecutor. The judicial category of ''pentiti'' was originally created in 1970s to combat violence and terrorism during the period of left-wing and right-wing terrorism known as the Years of Lead. During the 1986–87 Maxi Trial and after the testimony of Tommaso Buscetta, the term was increasingly applied to former members of organized crime in Italy who had abandoned their organization and started helping investigators. Role and benefits In exchange for the information they deliver, ''pentiti'' receive shorter sentences for their crimes, in some cases even freedom. In the Italian judicial system, ''pentiti'' can obtain personal protection, a new name, and some money to start a new life in another place, possibly abroad. This practi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tommaso Buscetta
Tommaso Buscetta (; 13 July 1928 – 2 April 2000) was a high-ranking Italian mobster and a member of the Sicilian Mafia. He became one of the first of its members to turn informant and explain the inner workings of the organization. Buscetta participated in criminal activity in Italy, the United States and Brazil before being arrested and extradited from Brazil to Italy. He became disillusioned with the Mafia after the murders of several of his family members, and in 1984, decided to cooperate with the authorities. He provided important testimony at the 1986/87 Maxi Trial, the largest anti-Mafia trial in history. After the murder of the judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, Buscetta gave further testimony to the Antimafia Commission linking Italian politicians to the Mafia. Buscetta entered the United States Federal Witness Protection Program, Witness Protection Program in the United States, where he remained until his death in 2000. Early life Tommaso Buscetta was born ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Enzo Tortora
Enzo Tortora (30 November 1928 – 18 May 1988) was an Italian television presenter on national RAI television, who was unjustly convicted of being a member of the Camorra and drug trafficking in 1985, and sentenced to 10 years in jail. He was acquitted of all charges by the Supreme Court of Cassation (Italy), Supreme Court of Cassation in 1987. Early career Tortora was born in Genoa, Italy. After taking a degree in journalism in his native city, he worked in theatre with Paolo Villaggio before joining the RAI, Italy's state radio and television corporation, as a radio announcer. In 1956, he first appeared on television and presented programmes such as ''Domenica Sportiva'' and ''Jeux Sans Frontières, Giochi senza frontiere''. In 1969, he was fired by RAI when he described the company's managers as a group of boy scouts trying to pilot a supersonic jet plane unsuccessfully. Subsequently, he worked for several private TV stations and various newspapers, before returning to RAI ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antonino Calderone
Antonino Calderone (24 October 193510 January 2013) was a Sicilian Mafioso who turned state witness (''pentito'') in 1987 after his arrest in 1986. Antonino was born in Catania, the brother of Giuseppe Calderone, the boss of the local Mafia. Antonino's memoirs, ''Men of Dishonor: Inside the Sicilian Mafia'', were published in 1992 with Antimafia sociologist Pino Arlacchi and are considered a handbook for understanding Cosa Nostra and the life of a mafioso. It was translated into many languages. Mafia career According to Antonino Calderone, the first Mafia family in Catania was started by Antonio Saitta, in 1925. He had been prosecuted by Mussolini’s ''Iron Prefect'', Cesare Mori. One of his daughters was the mother of Giuseppe and Antonino Calderone. Another uncle had helped the Mafia get back on its feet after World War II, organizing the black market in contraband cigarettes. Antonino Calderone, narrating his initiation ritual in Catania in 1962, recalls that he was s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Corleonesi
The Corleonesi Mafia clan was a faction within the Corleone family of the Sicilian Mafia, formed in the 1970s. Notable leaders included Luciano Leggio, Salvatore Riina, Bernardo Provenzano, and Leoluca Bagarella. Corleonesi affiliates were not restricted to mafiosi of Corleone. During the Second Mafia War in the early 1980s, the Corleonesi clan opposed the faction of the Palermitans represented, among others, by Gaetano Badalamenti, Stefano Bontate and Salvatore Inzerillo. The victory of the Corleonesi, and in particular the rise of Totò Riina, marked a new era in the history of the Sicilian Mafia. Between 1992 and 1993, the Corleonesi initiated a season of attacks against the state, followed by the State-Mafia Pact. History Beginnings In February 1971, the Corleonesi clan's first boss, Luciano Leggio, ordered the kidnapping for extortion of Antonino Caruso, son of the industrialist Giacomo Caruso, and also that of the son of the builder Francesco Vassallo in Paler ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caccamo
Caccamo ( Sicilian: ''Càccamu'') is a town and ''comune'' located on the Tyrrhenian coast of Sicily in the Metropolitan City of Palermo. History The official founding of Caccamo was not until 1093, when the Normans started to build the castle on a rocky spur overlooking a cliff, Castello di Caccamo. The castle itself is actually now being slowly converted into a museum. On the ground level of the castle is a restaurant "A Castellana". Submerged within the Rosamarina lake is a stone bridge built in 1307 on the road that once linked the town with Palermo. The city contains an attractive 11th-century cathedral, which was remodeled in 1477 and 1614. On the side of the cathedral are two churches. The Chiesa dell'Anime del Purgatorio ''(Church of the Souls of Purgatory)'' features some stucco work in the eastern end and an 18th-century organ. In the downstairs are catacombs where the skeletons of a number of townspeople lie in niches along the wall, a burial practice that lasted ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antonino Giuffrè
Antonino "Nino" Giuffrè (; born 21 July 1945) is an Italian former mafioso who later became a justice collaborator. The head of the mandamento of Caccamo, he was the second-highest ranked member of Cosa Nostra. He became one of the most important Mafia turncoats, or ''pentito'', after his arrest in April 2002, providing further information about its inner workings. As a state witness, Giuffrè provided information about the ties of Giulio Andreotti, Silvio Berlusconi, Salvatore Cuffaro, and Marcello Dell'Utri with the Mafia. He also testified on the role of the Mafia in the murder of Roberto Calvi and their plot to kill the then Antimafia Commission president Giuseppe Lumia. Early life and Mafia career Giuffrè was born in Caccamo, in the province of Palermo, in the modern-day Southern Italian region of Sicily. Among his relatives was John Stanfa, an Italian-born American former boss of the Philadelphia crime family from 1991 to 1995; Stanfa was his uncle. Giuffrè was t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giulio Andreotti
Giulio Andreotti ( ; ; 14 January 1919 – 6 May 2013) was an Italian politician and wikt:statesman, statesman who served as the 41st prime minister of Italy in seven governments (1972–1973, 1976–1979, and 1989–1992), and was leader of the Christian Democracy (Italy), Christian Democracy party and its right-wing; he was the sixth-longest-serving prime minister since the Italian unification and the second-longest-serving post-war prime minister. Andreotti is widely considered the most powerful and prominent politician of the First Republic (Italy), First Republic. Beginning as a protégé of Alcide De Gasperi, Andreotti achieved cabinet rank at a young age and occupied all the major offices of the state over the course of a 40-year political career, being seen as a reassuring figure by the civil service, the business community, and the Vatican. Domestically, he contained inflation following the 1973 oil crisis, founded the Healthcare in Italy, National Healthcare Service (' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Cataldo, Sicily
San Cataldo ( Sicilian: ''San Catallu'' or ''San Cataddu'') is a Sicilian town and ''comune'' in the province of Caltanissetta, in the southwestern part of the island of Sicily. Geography San Cataldo rises in an internal hilly area, located at 625 meters above sea level, which extends north of the town, between the municipalities of Serradifalco, Mussomeli, Caltanissetta, located within the Sicilian Solfifero plateau, an ancient area mining. It is 63 km from Agrigento, 9 km from Caltanissetta, 50 km from Enna, 150 km from Ragusa. It is crossed by a single river, the "Salito", formed by springs that arise from the slopes of Mount Schiavo near the town of Santa Caterina Villarmosa. The inhabited area extends into the plateau located between Portella del Tauro and Babbaurra, rich in partially drinkable water wells. History Near Vassallaggi there is evidence of human settlements dating back to the 6th-5th century BC. The current inhabited center has relatively recent origin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leonardo Messina
Leonardo "Narduzzo" Messina (born San Cataldo, September 22, 1955) is a Sicilian former mafioso who became a government informant or "pentito" in 1992. His testimony led to the arrest of over 200 mafiosi during the so-called "Operation Leopard" (). Messina has implicated several politicians and government officials with ties to Sicilian Mafia, in particular Giulio Andreotti, seven times Prime Minister for Italy. Early career Born in San Cataldo, Caltanissetta, Messina was from a family of mafiosi going back a few generations.Stille, ''Excellent Cadavers'', p. 362 "I represent the seventh generation belonging to Cosa Nostra," he said. "I was affiliated not because I was a robber or because I was able to kill, but because I was bound to become a member by family tradition." He left elementary school and became involved in burglary. He was imprisoned several times. In April 1982 after serving four years for armed robbery he eventually became a "man of honour" in the local Mafia fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salvatore Contorno
Salvatore Contorno (; born 28 May 1946), called Totuccio, is a former member of the Sicilian Mafia who turned into a state witness (''pentito'') against Cosa Nostra in October 1984, following the example of Tommaso Buscetta. He gave detailed accounts of the inner-workings of the Sicilian Mafia. His testimonies were crucial in the Maxi Trial against the Sicilian Mafia in Palermo and the Pizza Connection trial in New York City in the mid 1980s. Early Mafia career Contorno was born in Palermo. His father Antonino had been a mafioso from the later dissolved Corso Calatafimi Mafia family. Salvatore Contorno was a godson of Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco, who would go on to become the secretary of the Sicilian Mafia Commission. In 1975, the butcher ''Totuccio'' Contorno was initiated in the Santa Maria di Gesù Mafia family in Palermo, then led by Stefano Bontade, an influential member of the Sicilian Mafia Commission and a close ally of Ciaschiteddu. Contorno and Bontade used to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leonardo Vitale
Leonardo Vitale (; 27 June 1941 – 2 December 1984) was a member of the Sicilian Mafia who was one of the first to become an informant, or ''pentito'', although originally his confessions were not taken seriously. Vitale was a " man of honour" or member of the Altarello di Baida '' cosca'' or family, Altarello being a small village just outside Palermo. Background In 1960, at the age of 19, Vitale was affiliated with the clan mafia of Altarello, which was led by his uncle Giovanbattista "Titta". Vitale carried out extortions of construction companies on the orders of his uncle and his associate Giuseppe Calò, later being promoted to capodecina. In 1972, Vitale was arrested on suspicion of being implicated in the kidnapping of the manufacturer Luciano Cassina but was released after a week of isolation in the prison of Asinara. Whilst held in custody, he showed signs of depression that led to coprophagia and practised self-mutilation as his own act of contrition; doctors su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stress (medicine)
Stress, whether physiological, biological or psychological, is an organism's response to a stressor, such as an environmental condition or change in life circumstances. When stressed by stimuli that alter an organism's environment, multiple systems respond across the body. In humans and most mammals, the autonomic nervous system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis are the two major systems that respond to stress. Two well-known hormones that humans produce during stressful situations are adrenaline and cortisol. The sympathoadrenal medullary axis (SAM) may activate the fight-or-flight response through the sympathetic nervous system, which dedicates energy to more relevant bodily systems to acute adaptation to stress, while the parasympathetic nervous system returns the body to homeostasis. The second major physiological stress-response center, the HPA axis, regulates the release of cortisol, which influences many bodily functions, such as metabolic, psychologica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
