‘We need to end slavery in Calabria’

When Maria Concetta Cacciola’s husband held a pistol to her head, she fled to her parents’ house and begged them to protect her. Her father told her: ‘He’s your husband, you stay with him for the rest of your life.’ A new book by Sicilian journalist Lirio Abbate, Fimmine Ribelli (Rizzoli) describes the stories of …

Mafia boss’s daughter ‘honoured’ to bear his name

‘I’m sorry for the victims, but I am honoured to carry my father’s name.’ An interview given by Lucia Riina, daughter of the former Cosa Nostra boss, has outraged antimafia campaigners and relatives of Totò Riina’s many victims. ‘I love my parents,’ Lucia, 33, told a Swiss TV programme, ‘and I imagine that any child …

Going on holiday in southern Italy?

Here’s how to avoid supporting the mafia with your holiday cash. If you’re travelling to southern Italy this summer, you might occasionally wonder whether the bar where you’re enjoying your apero is owned by the local boss. Now you can make sure that your holiday budget doesn’t got straight into the mafia’s pocket. Five years …

Palermo hangs out its sheets in protest

It’s exactly 21 years since the violent death of anti-mafia judge Paolo Borsellino, who was blown up, with his bodyguards, as he called on his elderly mother in Palermo. I was rooting through old files in the attic, trying to find a particular set of cuttings (trying not to bash my head on the rafters) …

The woman who testified against her husband

For years, Carmela Iuculano played the dutiful wife to a boss in one of Sicily’s crime families. But after they were both arrested, Iuculano did the unthinkable: she testified against him. Clare Longrigg met her at a secret location in Italy, where she agreed to be interviewed – but was afraid to have her picture …

The devil’s lawyer

Criminal defence superstar Rosalba Di Gregorio is a well-known figure in Sicily’s legal circles – and the subject of much salacious gossip. An attractive blue-eyed woman representing members of a staunchly male organisation inevitably exerts a peculiar fascination and she is not shy of drawing attention to herself. She’s nearly 60, though looks and dresses …

Berlusconi wore jeans to meet Cosa Nostra boss

Berlusconi maintains that his conviction for tax fraud is the result of 'accusations and trials that have nothing to do with reality'. Il Cavaliere has always had an interesting relationship with reality. For years, he denied any relationship with Cosa Nostra, but there is a record of his meeting the mafia boss Stefano Bontade, known …