Borsellino's bag on display at the Chamber. "No to the myth of the red agenda", says historian Lupo

On the same topic:

“The Italian people have the right to know the truth” about the Via D'Amelio massacre and mafia massacres . This is the hope that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed yesterday in the Chamber, in front of the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella and the highest authorities of the country, on the occasion of the ceremony for the display of the case containing Paolo Borsellino's bag . The briefcase that the anti-mafia magistrate had with him on the day of his murder, July 19, 1992, will remain on display in the Transatlantic of Montecitorio and later transferred to the Anti-mafia Commission in Palazzo San Macuto. The bag, partly burned, was donated after the tragedy by Borsellino's wife, Agnese, to Lieutenant Colonel Carmelo Canale, one of the magistrate's closest collaborators. It is believed that the briefcase also contained the red diary in which the judge usually took notes, but it has never been found .

The “commitment to the truth” on the massacres, starting with the one in Via D'Amelio, was also invoked by the President of the Chamber, Lorenzo Fontana, and by the President of the Anti-Mafia Commission, Chiara Colosimo , in front of an audience that featured, in addition to the Head of State, the First President of the Court of Cassation Margherita Cassano (in the eye of the storm in the last few hours for the Massimario report on the security decree), the Vice President of the CSM Fabio Pinelli, the National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor Giovanni Melillo and other leading magistrates, such as the Prosecutor of Milan Marcello Viola and that of Naples Nicola Gratteri.

Right around the latter, at the end of the ceremony, a small group formed, led by two heavyweights of Fratelli d'Italia, the Undersecretary of Justice Andrea Delmastro and the party's head of organization, Giovanni Donzelli. Hugs, laughter and chatter in a particularly confidential atmosphere (even if the reporter did not miss a criticism, always made with a smile, addressed by the prosecutor to Delmastro: "You make too many reforms, you should ban fishing, come and see what happens in the courts"). In the end, Delmastro himself took Gratteri away, taking him by the arm, always with a 36-tooth smile.

A few meters away stood out the case containing Borsellino's burnt bag. An event destined to refuel the campaign about the magistrate's missing red diary. "We do not know if the red diary still exists, nor where it is, nor what can be written in it. And yet this diary has become for many the key to all the mysteries related to Cosa Nostra. I believe that the key to all the mysteries does not exist, because the mysteries are many and are not necessarily connected to each other and explainable in just one way", historian Salvatore Lupo tells Il Foglio . “Even Mussolini’s bag was supposed to contain the keys to who knows what secrets, but that’s not how it went. Every time there are unclear events, intrigues, we tend to hunt for definitive and hidden proof that would explain all the events we don’t fully understand. It would be very convenient to have a book to open and read all the secrets of Cosa Nostra. The source of sources. Usually this doesn’t happen, and up until now there’s no sign that it could happen with Borsellino’s red diary.”

The display of Borsellino's bag at the Chamber also takes place in a rather particular context. Just last Friday, the Caltanissetta prosecutor's office searched three homes of the former Nisseno prosecutor Giovanni Tinebra (who died in 2017), the prosecutor who first investigated the Via D'Amelio massacre and who is now accused, in death, of having taken Borsellino's red diary from the briefcase after the massacre. An initiative, which came 33 years after the events, that does not convince Lupo: “The Caltanissetta prosecutor's office once again shifts the attention from the mafia to the alleged complicity that the mafia would have enjoyed from institutional subjects. By investigating the judiciary, the Caltanissetta prosecutor's office tends to convey the idea that the mafia was not a big problem and that the real problem is the state. The public must be careful: it is like forgetting that there was a mafia that committed massacres, that made its decisions. Perhaps it was helped by someone, but that someone is not the main subject of this affair, unless proven otherwise. Besides, all the trials that wanted to demonstrate that the decisions taken by the mafia were actually taken by someone else have ended badly. On this point we must be careful”, concludes Lupo.

More on these topics: