Hours after suspending himself
as Sicily governor Thursday over a wiretap in which he allegedly
failed to challenge a pro-Mafia comment, a tearful Rosario
Crocetta told ANSA that "they killed me today".
Crocetta spoke after a news report surfaced of a 2013
wiretapped conversation between him and his personal doctor,
Matteo Tutino, in which the latter allegedly said ex-regional
health councillor Lucia Borsellino "ought to be stopped, done
away with like her father".
Paolo Borsellino, Lucia's father, was a crusading
anti-Mafia prosecutor blown up by Cosa Nostra in July 1992,
three months after his friend and colleague Giovanni Falcone.
The scandal arose from the fact that Crocetta reportedly
remained silent instead of challenging the statement made by
Tutino, who is under house arrest on charges of fraud,
falsehood, embezzlement and abuse of office he allegedly
committed as chief of plastic surgery at Villa Sofia hospital in
Palermo.
His phone had been tapped as part of that investigation.
Crocetta told ANSA earlier in the day "if I had heard that
phrase, I don't know...I would have tried to reach Tutino to
beat him senseless, maybe I would have called magistrates on the
spot...I'm shocked. I feel a profound horror".
A wave of public repulsion and disdain over the report
ensued, and Crocetta told ANSA he was suspending himself as
governor.
"I'm immediately suspending myself as governor of the
region," he said.
"Is it true the prosecutor's office is denying (the media
reports)?" Crocetta sobbed later.
"Why...why," he said. "How powerful is this Mafia that
wants to slay me? I could have done myself in today".
Palermo prosecutors however said their office has no record
of such a wiretapped phone conversation between Crocetta and
Tutino, excerpts of which were anticipated by L'Espresso news
magazine on its website Thursday.
The magazine, however, stood by its story.
It said the incriminated statement was contained in one of
three classified wiretaps taken as part of the hospital probe in
2013.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
