“Thanks to Falcone’s courage, professionalism and determination, Italy has become a freer and fairer country,” Draghi said in a statement.
“Falcone and his colleagues in the anti-Mafia pool of Palermo not only inflicted decisive blows on the mafia. Their heroism rooted the values of the anti-mafia in society, in new generations, in republican institutions”, a- he added.
On May 23, 1992 at 5:58 p.m., a 500-kilogram load of TNT and ammonium nitrate ripped open a portion of the highway leading to Palermo airport, pulverizing a car from Judge Falcone’s escort, which was thrown several hundred of meters. The three policemen on board are killed.
In the other car, an armored white Fiat Croma, Judge Falcone, who is driving, and his wife Francesca Morvillo, on the passenger side, are fatally injured. Only their driver, seated in the back, survives.
On the scene of the attack stand today a stele and a “garden of memory”, where the Minister of the Interior Luciana Lamorgese laid a wreath of flowers on Monday morning. The President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, whose brother was also murdered by the mafia, took part in another ceremony in Palermo, capital of Sicily.
This anniversary appeared Monday on the front page of all the major daily newspapers, such as La Stampa, which displayed a photo of the judge on the front page accompanied by this title: “One of us”.
Judge Falcone, symbol of the start of the Italian State against Cosa Nostra, had notably instructed the first “maxi-trial” of the mafia which led in 1987 to the conviction of hundreds of mafiosos.
Anti-Mafia prosecutor Paolo Borsellino, considered Falcone’s “Siamese brother”, also ended up killed in a bomb attack with five members of his escort on July 19, 57 days after his friend Giovanni. A two-euro coin bearing their image has just been issued in their honour.
