After Brusca goes free, the debate on the pentiti law reopens: what can happen

That the end of the sentence would also come for Giovanni Brusca, the boia of Capaci, was a foregone conclusion. As taken for granted is the controversy that the news has aroused. Politics is divided. But it is difficult to think that the law on pentiti, wanted by Giovanni Falcone himself, could be modified, despite the bitterness of the victims' families. "I learned the news of Giovanni Brusca's definitive release. I know that the law has been applied, but I am very bitter. I believe that this is not justice either for the relatives or for decent people. After 33 years, the trials continue and we do not know the truth. I expect the city to be outraged, if it is true that it has changed,' comments, bitterly, Tina Montinaro, the widow of Antonio Montinaro, Giovanni Falcone's escort who died on 23 May 1992 together with the judge, his wife Francesca Morvillo and the two other agents who protected the magistrate, Vito Schifani and Rocco Dicillo.

Brusca, according to investigative reconstructions and on his own admission, operated the remote control that triggered the terrible explosion that ripped through the motorway at Capaci, killing Falcone. Just one of the heinous crimes committed by the boss of San Giuseppe Jato who, after deciding to cooperate with justice, confessed to 150 murders, including that of little Giuseppe Di Matteo, the son of the turncoat who was kidnapped, strangled and dissolved in acid after 779 days of captivity. Finished in a cell in 1996, after a false start as a turncoat (he pretended to collaborate with justice), Brusca wrote thousands of pages of minutes self-accusing himself of massacres and murders and allowing investigators to make hundreds of arrests. But doubts have always remained as to his sincerity, especially with regard to his own assets and abettors.

"There is little to say. It is a matter of the order of things. He has served his sentence, he has taken advantage of the treatment provided by law for collaborators. All I am saying is that, even as a free man, he remains a criminal,' Alfredo Morvillo, former magistrate and brother of Francesca Morvillo, comments dryly. Maria Falcone, sister of the magistrate killed at Capaci, is also dry. 'As a citizen and as a sister,' she said, 'I cannot hide the pain and deep bitterness that this moment inevitably brings. But as a woman of the institutions I also feel the duty to strongly affirm that this is the law. A law, the one on collaborators of justice, wanted by Giovanni, and considered indispensable to break up mafia organisations from within. He has benefited from this legislation, he has had a path of collaboration with justice that has had a significant impact on the fight against Cosa Nostra'.

Along the same lines is former magistrate and former president of the Senate Piero Grasso, according to whom 'we must avoid gut reactions and reason together. The law for which he is now considered free, after 25 years in prison and 4 years of probation, was wanted by Giovanni Falcone, and it is the law that allowed us to raze to the ground the dome of Riina, Provenzano and Messina Denaro, which in the 1980s and 1990s bloodied Palermo, Sicily, and Italy'. Brusca, having settled his account with the law, remains under protection

Politics is divided. But the positions of those who consider the current law on pentiti, which led to Brusca's release from prison, prevail. In Forza Italia, the positions are different. "The release of Giovanni Brusca was decided by applying the law. And it is precisely for this reason that we should reflect on that law. It was certainly a useful and necessary norm wanted by Falcone, but now it is the case to question ourselves and to understand if there are aspects that can be improved. Because knowing at large who operated the remote control that triggered the explosion of the Capaci massacre and led to the barbaric murder of little Giuseppe Di Matteo, is really too much,' declared the Italian azure senator and vice president of the Senate, Licia Ronzulli. Also harsh was Senator Maurizio Gasparri for whom 'imagining that Brusca may have a future and all his victims do not, arouses indignation'. While the deputy minister of justice, Francesco Paolo Sisto, emphasises that 'there may be a difficulty in understanding' the reasons for the release of mafiosi like Brusca who have cooperated with justice, but 'we must ask ourselves this question: if these individuals had not cooperated with justice, how many other crimes would have remained unpunished?' And again: 'There is nothing worse than a justice that relies on emotion, on the gut'.