«Let’s meet at the Santoro bar – he says on the phone – in a quarter of an hour». Santino Di Matteo, the justice collaborator who first revealed the secrets of the Capaci massacre, avoids staying in one place for too long. He has been out of the protection program for years now, and the State has never forgiven him for returning to Sicily in 1994 to look for his son Giuseppe, who had been kidnapped by the bosses. “I’ll wait for you outside, at the tables – he states again on the phone – in the chaos of Piazza Indipendenza no one will notice us”.
Today, Santino Di Matteo returned to Palermo again, but only for one day. “Just to entrust all my indignation to you,” he whispers now over a coffee. «I keep reading on the Repubblica website about bosses serving life sentences put on semi-liberty». He pauses and continues with vigor: «But just as certain judges in the North write that dangerous mafiosi have become model prisoners, the mafiosi have only one thought in their heads: reorganizing Cosa Nostra». Santino Di Matteo looks around, two boys have just arrived at the table next to ours. «Up there, where I live – he smiles – they don’t make such good coffee». But, in the meantime, he looked those two boys up and down with their helmets in their hands. He puts down the cup and says: «Killers on reward leave return to Palermo for fifteen days and I, on the other hand, who have paid a very high price to help the State defeat the bosses of the massacres, have to continue to hide far from Sicily. Expelled from the protection program for life even though the mafia killed my son for my statements.”
There really is a lot of chaos in Piazza Indipendenza at ten in the morning. Nobody notices this man who has the horrors of the mafia in his eyes, the horrors he continues to see. «In the last phone call – Santino Di Matteo now whispers – some time before the kidnapping, Giuseppe said to me: “Dad, how are you? Dad, don’t worry.” He was the one who encouraged me, he had the gift of a smile. And they killed me.” This time, as he speaks, he glances at a group of kids at another table who can’t stop laughing and joking. “They must have skipped school,” I say. “They’re fifteen years old,” he says instead, as if to justify them. «Fifteen years old, the age my son was when he was strangled and dissolved in acid after 700 days of captivity».
Santino Di Matteo is saddened. «Thirty years of fighting the mafia cannot be put aside with the stroke of a pen – he insists – These releases risk ruining everything». The last free bosses that Repubblica wrote about are Vito Brusca, Giovanni’s cousin, the mafia boss of San Giuseppe Jato who ordered the killing of little Giuseppe Di Matteo, now also a collaborator with justice; and then Girolamo Buccafusca, from Porta Nuova. Every morning, they leave the Pagliarelli prison in Palermo and go to volunteer, then in the evening they return to their cells. «These are people who don’t change», Santino Di Matteo continues to repeat. “How can you not understand that?”
These days, there are many things that are not understood in this anti-mafia which seems to have become schizophrenic. I tell Di Matteo that there isn’t even a list of mafiosi on free leave: after the articles in “Repubblica” which reported multiple cases, the magistrates asked the Dap to carry out monitoring. I also tell him that Raffaele Galatolo, the clan’s strangler, has returned to Acquasanta, he too is now considered a model prisoner and for this reason rewarded with a holiday in Palermo. And, meanwhile, in the same neighborhood, the State is still unable to declare Lia Pipitone an innocent victim of the mafia, the young woman who rebelled against the mafia culture in the brutal 1980s under Galatolo and many others and was therefore killed with the consent of her boss father. «And does my story seem any less to you?», he says. «Thrown out of the protection program because I was looking for my son». I tell him: “But, at the time, he was convicted of weapons possession and had joined a gang led by another collaborator, Balduccio Di Maggio.” He replies: «But I didn’t hurt anyone. I was only looking for my son and I had to defend myself.” He says he also appealed to administrative justice against the decision of the central protection commission which rejected his return to the program, as requested by the Palermo Prosecutor’s Office. The TAR also agreed with him, then the Council of State overturned the decision by accepting the appeal of the Ministry of the Interior. «However, the judges reiterated that I must be protected, because I continue to be at risk», he is keen to point out. “I have had hundreds of mafiosi arrested and even today I am called by magistrates to contribute to the investigations.”
Suddenly, there seems to be no more confusion in Piazza Indipendenza as Santino Di Matteo slowly walks away towards Corso Calatafimi. His cup of coffee remained on the bar table. Before leaving, he said: «Giuseppe won, we put all the bloodiest mafiosi in prison. But if they start to come out now, my son’s sacrifice will have been useless.”
The repentant Di Matteo: “The mafia killers on free leave and I, on the other hand, no longer protected”
https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2024/12/04/news/il_pentito_di_matteo_i_killer_di_mafia_in_permesso_premio_e_io_invece_senza_piu_protezione-423820151/?rss