1,000 march in anti-Mafia solidarity with Di Matteo
(ANSA) – Palermo, November 18 – One thousand activists from various anti-Mafia organizations gathered Monday to march through the Sicilian city of Palermo in solidarity with deputy prosecutor Nino Di Matteo after he received death threats from former Cosa Nostra Mafia ”boss of bosses” Toto’ Riina.
The jailed mobster shouted for the death of justice officials, including Di Matteo, from his prison cell during hearings into alleged secret negotiations between the Italian State and the Mafia two decades ago.
”Di Matteo must die…they’re driving me crazy,” Riina shouted, according to a guard quoted by La Repubblica newspaper last week.
The march, led by a banner with assassinated prosecutor Giovanni Falcone’s famous words ”It’s when we’re isolated that we die”, will head to city hall, where activists will hold a flashmob in memory of the 1992 Mafia killings of Falcone and his colleague and friend, prosecutor Paolo Borsellino, and a spate of fatal Mafia bombings in 1993. ”We want to show our solidarity with Di Matteo. We know how serious the threats are when they come from Riina, and we don’t want a repeat of what happened in 1992”, said Simone Cappellani, a spokesperson for the Red Agendas movement, so named after the little red book Borsellino always carried with him, and which disappeared from his car after he was slain.
”I am here first and foremost as a citizen, expressing the concern of all Sicilians”, said Sicily Governor Rosario Crocetta. ”The serious threats against Di Matteo will not stop his work, or that of the prosecution, or the revolution that is taking place in our region”.