The assassination by Cosa Nostra of
Carabinieri General and Palermo Prefect Carlo Alberto Dalla
Chiesa ushered in a "quality leap" in the fight against the
Sicilian Mafia which has reaped major successes, President
Sergio Mattarella said ahead of Saturday's 39th anniversary of
the killing.
On 1 May 1982, Dalla Chiesa, who had won acclaim in fighting the
Red Brigades domestic terrorists, was appointed as prefect for
Palermo to stop the violence of the Second Mafia War. He was
murdered in Palermo on 3 September 1982, on the orders of bloody
late Mafia boss Salvatore 'the Beast' Riina.
He and his second wife Emanuela Setti Carraro were in an
Autobianchi A112 driven by her, when a number of gunmen on
motorbikes and a car forced the car off the road where it
crashed into a stationary vehicle.
The gunmen opened fire and Dalla Chiesa was killed along with
his wife and their escort agent, Domenico Russo.
Mattarella said "their barbaric murder was one of the gravest
moments in the attack on institutions by organized crime but, at
the same time, it ended up accentuating still more an
unbridgeable gap between the wounded city and the Mafia that
continued to want to decide its destiny with intimidation and
death".
Mattarella said "the national community in its entirety, albeit
struck and shaken, succeeded in reacting to that hateful
challenge by strengthening itself with the same determined and
lucid energy which Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa had already
showed in his work against criminal and terrorist organizations,
during his brilliant career in the Carabinieri.
"Despite the brevity of his work in Palermo, the sacrifice of
Prefect Dalla Chiesa and his ideal heritage helped direct many
of the choices that, in the subsequent years, enabled a quality
leap in the action of fighting phenomena of mafia infiltration
of the economy and the public administration.
"More incisive norms and powers of coordination gave fresh
vigour to the strategies of combatting organized crime and
strengthened the confidence of the public apparatus that was
fighting it; while, in civil society, there grew a feeling og
active citizenship, harbinger of a culture of rights
counterposed to the logic of belonging and privilege.
"In recalling that extreme sacrifice, I renew to the Dalla
Chiesa, Setti Carraro and Russo families my feelings of
closeness and participation, on mt part and that of the whole
country," said Mattarella, who lost his elder brother Piersanti,
the Sicilian regional council chair, to the Mafia in January
1980.
Senate Speaker Elisabetta Casellati said Dalla Chiesa was "a
symbol of the fight against the Mafia".
House Speaker Roberto Fico said "the Mafia feared his courage,
and this patrimony must be closely guarded".
Maria Falcone, sister of Giovanni Falcone, a Mafia prosecutor
assassinated in 1992, said Dalla Chiesa's death had "not been in
vain".
The murder of Falcone and, two months later, of his friend and
colleague Paolo Borsellino, spurred a reaction by the Italian
State which has curbed the power of the Sicilian Mob, with a
string of bosses including the late Riina and the late Bernardo
Provenzano being arrested over the years.
Trapani superboss Matteo Messina Denaro is one of the few major
figures still at large.
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