The Bridge Digital newspapers Croatian edition 1990s | Page 25

Together, this two judges created
the antimafia pool, that, thanks to
the quality of these two men,
revealed a fatal weapon against the
mafia.
This project brought a famous maxi-
process, where 475 “Mafiosi” were
convicted. The success of this
process was also useful to incite the
judges and gave great satisfaction
to all the Italians. It was a difficult
process, lasting more than 2 years,
but the results were really good.
Unfortunately, this big process was
a unique episode that was never
repeated, even though from that
moment on the problem of mafia was
seriously addressed.
Nevertheless, many colleagues of the
two judges were corrupted and
involved in mafia matters, so after
the maxi-trial they had to face a lot
of difficulties in their work: Falcone
was accused of “protagonism” and
for this reason he asked to be
transferred to Rome; Borsellino was
removed from the investigations in
Palermo and was assigned to
Agrigento and Trapani; finally the
antimafia pool was over.
Despite all these complications
Falcone tried to continue his work
also in Rome. Unfortunately, they
never saw their dream (the
“destruction” of the mafia) come
true: they were both killed in two
terrible attacks. First Falcone died in
the attack of Capaci. His car blew
up: 500 kilos of TNT took away his
life. His wife and 3 policemen also
died.
After Falcone’ death, Paolo Borsellino
realized that he didn’t have too
much time left. He also said this in
an interview: “I have to hurry up,
because now it’s my turn.” And
actually, on July 19th of the same
year, a car bomb exploded near his
mother’s house while Borsellino was
going to visit her.
Their death was not in vain, in fact
with them the Italians understood
the gravity of the mafia and their
ideas will remain forever.
Falcone legacy was: “The men pass,
the ideas remain.”