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 Cesare TERRANOVA

 

 Cesare Terranova è nato a Palermo il 15 agosto del 1921 ed è stato un magistrato e un parlamentare italiano.

 Magistrato italiano, capo dell'Ufficio Istruzione del Tribunale di Palermo, era già stato procuratore d'accusa al processo contro la mafia corleonese tenutosi nel 1969 a Bari, ove però quasi tutti gli imputati furono assolti. Fu procuratore della Repubblica a Marsala fino al 1973 dove si occupò del "mostro" Michele Vinci. Si distinse per aver processato e condannato all'ergastolo, nel 1974, la "Primula rossa" di Corleone, Luciano Liggio (già assolto al processo di Bari).

 Fu deputato alla Camera, nella lista del PCI, come indipendente di sinistra, dal 1976 al 1979, e fu membro della Commissione parlamentare Antimafia. Dopo l'esperienza parlamentare, tornò in magistratura per essere nominato capo dell'Ufficio Istruzione di Palermo.

 Per Cesare Terranova il bridge era l'hobby per elezione, è stato un ottimo giocatore, dotato di risorse tecniche notevoli e di una grande capacità di concentrazione, ma, soprattutto, è stato l'instancabile promotore della nascita del bridge palermitano. Socio fondatore del circoletto di via Stabile (il primo insediamento palermitano), fu Presidente dell'Associazione Bridge Palermo e collaborò come consulente tecnico giuridico con il Consiglio Direttivo della FIB.

Il 25 settembre del 1979 verso le ore 8,30 del mattino, una Fiat 131 di scorta arrivò sotto casa del giudice a Palermo per portarlo a lavoro. Cesare Terranova si mise alla guida della vettura mentre accanto a lui sedeva il maresciallo di Pubblica Sicurezza Lenin Mancuso, l'unico uomo della sua scorta che lo seguiva da vent'anni come un angelo custode.

L'auto imboccò una strada secondaria trovandola inaspettatamente chiusa da una transenna di lavori in corso. Il giudice Terranova non fece in tempo a intuire il pericolo. In quell'istante da un angolo sbucarono alcuni killer che aprirono ripetutamente il fuoco con una carabina Winchester e delle pistole contro la Fiat 131. Cesare Terranova istintivamente ingranò la retromarcia nel disperato tentativo di sottrarsi a quella tempesta di piombo mentre il maresciallo Mancuso, in un estremo tentativo di reazione, impugnò la Beretta di ordinanza per cercare di sparare contro i sicari, ma entrambi furono raggiunti dai proiettili in varie parti del corpo.

Al giudice Terranova i killer riservarono anche il colpo di grazia, sparandogli a bruciapelo alla nuca. La sua fedele guardia del corpo, Lenin Mancuso, morì dopo alcune ore di agonia in ospedale.

La moglie Giovanna, è stata una figura di spicco nella guerra alla mafia ed è stata la co-fondatrice dell'"Associazione Siciliana delle Donne contro la Mafia".

   Cesare Terranova (Palermo, August 15, 1921 – Palermo, September 25, 1979) was a magistrate and politician from Sicily notable for his anti-Mafia stance. From 1958 until 1971 Terranova was an examining magistrate at the Palermo prosecuting office. He was one of the first to seriously investigate the Mafia and the financial operations of Cosa Nostra. He was killed by the Mafia in 1979. Cesare Terranova can be considered as the predecessor of the magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino who were also killed by the Mafia in 1992.

n the 1960s, Terranova helped bring numerous Mafiosi to trial and subsequent imprisonment. At the time the prosecution was separated in an examining phase (the so-called instruction phase) and a prosecuting phase. Terranova led the examining office. He was a key figure in the Trial of the 114 which saw many prominent Mafiosi on trial for their role in the First Mafia War in the early 1960s that ended with the Ciaculli massacre on June 30, 1963. On May 31, 1965, he ordered the prosecution of 114 mafiosi.

However, despite Terranova’s efforts, the sentence of the Trial of the 114 on December 22, 1968, by the Court of Catanzaro was a disappointment and many prominent mafiosi were acquitted. All but 10 of the 114 defendants were acquitted. Angelo La Barbera got 22 years and Tommaso Buscetta 14 years for two so-called “white deaths” - the so-called lupara bianca which is used to refer to a mafia-style murder in which the victim's body is deliberately hidden.

Terranova was the first to acknowledge the existence of a Sicilian Mafia Commission. He based himself on a confidential report of the Carabinieri of May 28, 1963, where a confidential informant revealed the existence of a commission composed of fifteen persons – six from Palermo city and the rest from towns in the province – "each with the rank of boss of either a group or a Mafia family." Judge Terranova did not believe that the existence of a commission meant that the Mafia was a tightly unified structure.

Terranova also led investigations into the connections between the Mafia and politics. He looked into the exploits of the prominent Sicilian politician Salvatore Lima as mayor of Palermo and concluded that Lima was in league with a number of Mafiosi, including Angelo La Barbera. In an indictment in 1964, Terranova wrote: "it is clear that Angelo and Salvatore La Barbera (well-known bosses in the Palermo area) ... knew former mayor Salvatore Lima and maintained relations in such a way as to ask for favours. ... The undeniable contacts of the La Barbera mafiosi with the one who was the first citizen of Palermo ... constitute a confirmation of ... the infiltration of the Mafia in several sectors of public life." However, nothing came of his enquiries or allegations.

Terranova made little attempt to hide the fact that his ambition was to bring Luciano Leggio, the boss of the Corleone Mafia Family – known as the Corleonesi – to justice. In 1965 Terranova ordered the prosecution of over sixty Corleonesi, including Leggio (Trial Leggio + 63), for a series of murders in Corleone between 1958 and 1963. The most prominent victim had been the Mafia-boss of Corleone, Michele Navarra.

However, the sentence of the Bari Court on June 10, 1969, resulted in acquittals for all the 64 defendants. The jury found Leggio guilty of stealing grain in 1948, for which he received a suspended sentence, but he was pronounced not guilty on all other accounts. Salvatore Riina – Leggio's eventual successor – was acquitted in 1969 and remained at large until his capture in 1993.

The prosecution appealed successfully against the Catanzaro verdict that had acquitted Leggio and had him tried in absentia in 1970. This time Leggio was found guilty, although he had left jail after the Catanzaro trial and it was not until 1974 that Leggio was finally captured again and taken into custody.

In May 1972 Terranova was elected as a representative in the Italian Parliament for the Independent Left under the auspices of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). He became the secretary of the Antimafia Commission that was established in 1963 after the Ciaculli massacre. He was re-elected in 1976. Terranova together with PCI deputy Pio La Torre wrote the minority report of the Antimafia Commission that was published in 1976, which pointed to links between the Mafia and prominent politicians in particular of the Christian Democrat party (DC - Democrazia Cristiana).

Terranova had urged his colleagues of the majority to take their responsibility. According to the minority report:

… it would be a grave error on the part of the Commission to accept the theory that the Mafia-political link has been eliminated. Even today the behaviour of the ruling DC group in the running of the City and the Provincional Councils offers the most favourable terrain for the perpetuation of the system of Mafia power.

However, the reports and the documentation of the Antimafia Commission were essentially disregarded. Terranova would talk of “thirteen wasted years” of the Antimafia Commission, and did not seek re-election again.

At the end of the legislature in June 1979, Cesare Terranova asked to be re-instated in the judiciary and was appointed as the chief examining magistrate at the Court in Palermo. However, on September 25, 1979, then aged fifty-eight, Terranova was shot to death in his car along with his driver, policeman Lenin Mancuso, who acted as his bodyguard. The combination of his investigative skills and his recent political connections in Rome would have made Terranova an even more formidable Mafia opponent than before.

Luciano Leggio was charged with ordering Terranova's murder at the Maxi Trial but was acquitted due to insufficient evidence. Leggio hated Terranova. During an interrogation preparing the Trial of the 114, Leggio refused to answer questions. When in response to one of them, Leggio replied that he could not even recall his own name or his parents, Terranova instructed the clerk: “Write that Leggio does not know whose son he is.” Leggio was infuriated with the implication that he was a bastard.

In 1997 the prosecution office in Reggio Calabria re-opened the murder investigation after the pentiti Francesco Di Carlo and Gaspare Mutolo named the mafiosi Giuseppe Madonia and Leoluca Bagarella as the material killers. Di Carlo confirmed that Leggio had ordered the killing of Terranova. In 1974, when the Sicilian Mafia Commission was reorganized, Leggio through Totò Riina (Leggio was in jail) asked the Commission gathered at Michele Greco’s estate Favarella for permission. The Commission decided, on instigation of Gaetano Badalamenti, that Terranova should be killed outside Sicily, in Rome. The killing was stalled because of plans to liberate Leggio. When that failed Terranova’s murder was on the agenda again and was confirmed in June 1979 during a Commission meeting at the Favarella estate.

On January 15, 2000, Salvatore Riina, Bernardo Brusca, Bernardo Provenzano, Francesco Madonia, Pippo Calò, Nenè Geraci and Michele Greco (all members of the Sicilian Mafia Commission at the time of the murder) were convicted to life sentences for ordering the murder of Terranova (Leggio had died). However, Leoluca Bagarella, Giuseppe Madonia and Giuseppe Farinella were acquitted as the material killers. After 25 years, in October 2004, the Supreme Court confirmed the life sentences for Totò Riina, Michele Greco, Nenè Geraci and Francesco Madonia.

Cesare Terranova’s widow Giovanna would become a prominent personality in the Antimafia movement after her husband was murdered. She co-founded the first permanent civil anti-mafia organisation, the Associazione donne siciliane per la lotta contro la Mafia (Association of Sicilian Women against the Mafia). Giovanna Terranova said in an interview: "I would have felt guilty if I had stayed at home. I would have thought: Cesare died for nothing. Yes, because being killed is terrible, but being forgotten is even worse. It’s like dying twice."

For Cesare Terranova bridge was the hobby for election, was an excellent player, equipped with considerable technical resources and a great ability to concentrate, but, above all, was the tireless promoter of the birth of the bridge from Palermo. Founding member of the little circle in via Stable (the first settlement of Palermo), was President of the Palermo Bridge Association and collaborated as a legal expert with the FIB Council of Directors.

   Cesare Terranova (*1921 in Palermo; † 25. September 1979 in Palermo) war ein leitender sizilianischer Ermittlungsrichter.

Cesare Terranova war einer der ersten engagierten Ermittlungsrichter, die sich ernsthaft der Bekämpfung der Cosa Nostra, wie sich die sizilianische Mafia selbst nennt, widmete. Von 1958 an war er in Palermo als Ermittlungsrichter tätig. Durch den Ersten Mafiakrieg 1962/1963 erhielt die Anti-Mafia-Bewegung erstmals Auftrieb und Terranova avancierte zu einem ihrer wichtigsten Vorkämpfer. 1965 klagte er Luciano Liggio und 63 weitere Ehrenmänner der Corleoneser an; er warf ihnen vor, den früheren Chef der Cosa Nostra von Corleone, Dr. Michele Navarra, sowie viele seiner Anhänger 1958 ermordet zu haben. Terranova untersuchte die weitreichenden Verbindungen zwischen Mafia und Politik, insbesondere die Rolle Salvatore Limas, dem seit den 1950er Jahren nachgesagt wurde, mit den palermischen Mafiafamilien verbandelt zu sein. Terranova war auch maßgeblich am „Prozess der 114“ beteiligt, in dem viele der wichtigsten Ehrenmänner und die Protagonisten des Mafiakrieges angeklagt waren. Dieser Prozess endete jedoch 1968 mit Freisprüchen für die meisten Angeklagten. Luciano Liggio konnte 1974 in Mailand verhaftet werden. Bei den nachfolgenden Prozessen wurde er schließlich auch dank Terranovas Arbeit zu lebenslänglicher Freiheitsstrafe verurteilt.

1972 wechselte Terranova in die Politik und wurde als ein Vertreter der Linken in das italienische Parlament gewählt. Er kritisierte heftig die engen Verbindungen der Democrazia Cristiana zur Cosa Nostra. 1979, am Ende seiner zweiten Legislatur, wechselte Terranova wieder zurück nach Palermo, wo er der Chef-Ermittler am Gericht von Palermo wurde. In diesen Jahren begann die Cosa Nostra unter Führung der Corleoneser damit, ranghohe Vertreter des Staates zu ermorden, dies teils um die von ihnen ausgehende Gefahr zu eliminieren, teils auch um deren Nachfolgern eine Warnung zukommen zu lassen. Am 25. September 1979 wurde Cesare Terranova zusammen mit seinem Chauffeur und Leibwächter, dem Polizeibeamten Lenin Mancuso, in Palermo in seinem Auto erschossen. Im Jahre 2004 wurden die Mitglieder der Sizilianischen Mafia-Kommission, Salvatore Riina, Michele Greco, Francesco Madonia und Nene Geraci als die Auftraggeber des Mordes an Terranova rechtskräftig verurteilt.

Cesare Terranova war ein ausgezeichneter Bridge Spieler, mit einem erheblichen technischen Ressourcen und eine große Fähigkeit zur Konzentration, aber vor allem war der unermüdliche Förderer der Geburt von der Bridge aus Palermo. Gründungsmitglied des kleinen Kreis auf Stable (die erste Siedlung von Palermo), und war Präsident der Palermo Bridge Verein arbeitete als Jurist mit dem Rat der Direktoren der FIB.

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