Piersanti Mattarella murder, ex-mobile squad officer under house arrest for deception

Home arrest for Filippo Piritore, accused of distorting the investigation into the murder of former Sicilian Regional President Piersanti Mattarella, who was killed in Palermo on 6 January 1980.

The Dia (Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate), in fact, this morning notified the precautionary measure to Piritore, 75, a former official of the Palermo Mobile Squad (at the time of the facts) and former Quaestor of Caltanissetta, L'Aquila and Genoa, as well as Prefect of Isernia from 2011 to 2015. This was announced by the Palermo Public Prosecutor's Office.

When questioned by the prosecutors about the glove found on the day of the crime on board the Fiat 127 used by the killers, which had never been found or seized, according to the magistrates, 'he made statements that turned out to be completely unsupported, with which he contributed to misleading the investigation that was instrumental (also) to the discovery of the glove (which was never found)'.

"The investigations into the murder of former regional president Piersanti Mattarella were seriously polluted and compromised by members of the institutions who, with the obvious aim of preventing the identification of the perpetrators of the crime, removed a very important piece of evidence from the evidentiary compendium, causing its traces to be definitively dispersed," wrote the prosecutors of the DDA (Anti-Mafia District Directorate) who obtained from the gip the house arrest for misleading former Mobile Squad official Filippo Piritore.

The name of Bruno Contrada, the former number two of the Sisde convicted for external complicity in mafia association, crops up in the story of the glove that one of Piersanti Mattarella's killers forgot in the car used for the escape from the crime scene and then disappeared into thin air.