1992-1993 bombings (Italy)

The term 1992–1993 bombing refers to a period in the history of the Italian Republic marked by a series of bombings carried out by the criminal organization from Sicily of the Mafia type known as Cosa Nostra, which took place in Italy during the early 1990s of the 20th century, specifically between 1992 and 1993. Quotes about Gli attentati contro i giudici Falcone e Borsellino nel 1992 rappresentano una svolta nelle strategie criminali di Cosa nostra. La loro lettura non appare difficile: la mafia, che avverte un crescente isolamento, una più intensa pressione investigativa, attacca duramente le due persone più esposte nella lotta contro la criminalità. Gli attentati del 1993 sono di più difficile lettura, perché apparentemente non hanno dei precisi obiettivi "militari", non perseguono l'eliminazione fisica di soggetti pericolosi per l'organizzazione mafiosa. Perché questi attentati durante il governo Ciampi? Forse che con esso ogni aggancio è impossibile, irrecuperabile? È forse per questo che, con una strategia stragistica, si vuole dimostrare l'incapacità di controllo dell’Esecutivo sul territorio nazionale, e per tale via delegittimarlo? The attacks on Judges Falcone and Borsellino in 1992 marked a turning point in Cosa Nostra’s criminal strategies. Interpreting them is not difficult: the Mafia, sensing growing isolation and intensified investigative pressure, launched a brutal attack on the two most prominent figures in the fight against crime. The 1993 attacks are more difficult to interpret, because they apparently lack specific “military” objectives; they do not seek the physical elimination of individuals dangerous to the mafia organization. Why were these attacks carried out during the Ciampi government? Could it be that any connection with it is now impossible, irretrievable? Is this perhaps why, through a strategy of mass attacks, the aim is to demonstrate the Executive power’s inability to maintain control over the national territory, and thereby delegitimize it? Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, quoted in Gianni Barbacetto, Quando il presidente Ciampi ebbe paura del colpo di Stato, giannibarbacetto.it, 19 September 2016. Il mio governo fu contrassegnato dalle bombe. Ricordo [...] quel 27 luglio, avevo appena terminato una giornata durissima che si era conclusa positivamente con lo sblocco della vertenza degli autotrasportatori. Ero tutto contento, e me ne andavo a Santa Severa per qualche ora di riposo. Arrivai a tarda sera, e a mezzanotte mi informarono della bomba a Milano. Chiamai subito Palazzo Chigi, per parlare con Andrea Manzella che era il mio segretario generale. Mentre parlavamo al telefono, udimmo un boato fortissimo, in diretta: era l'esplosione della bomba di San Giorgio al Velabro. Andrea mi disse "Carlo, non capisco cosa sta succedendo...", ma non fece in tempo a finire, perché cadde la linea. Io richiamai subito, ma non ci fu verso: le comunicazioni erano misteriosamente interrotte. [...] ebbi paura che fossimo a un passo da un colpo di Stato. [...] corsi come un pazzo in macchina, e mi precipitai a Roma. Arrivai a Palazzo Chigi all'una e un quarto di notte, convocai un Consiglio supremo di difesa alle 3, perché ero convinto che lo Stato dovesse dare subito una risposta forte, immediata, visibile. Alle 4 parlai con Scalfaro al Quirinale, e gli dissi "presidente, dobbiamo reagire". Alle 8 del mattino riunii il Consiglio dei ministri, e subito dopo partii per Milano. Il golpe non ci fu, grazie a dio. Ma certo, su quella notte, sui giorni che la precedettero e la seguirono, resta un velo di mistero. My administration was marked by bombings. I remember [...] that July 27; I had just finished an extremely difficult day that had ended on a positive note with the resolution of the truckers’ dispute. I was in high spirits and was heading to Santa Severa for a few hours of rest. I arrived late in the evening, and at midnight I was informed of the bomb in Milan. I immediately called Palazzo Chigi to speak with Andrea Manzella, who was my secretary-general. While we were talking on the phone, we heard a deafening boom, live: it was the explosion of the bomb at San Giorgio al Velabro. Andrea said to me, “Carlo, I don’t understand what’s happening…,” but he didn’t have time to finish, because the line went dead. I called back immediately, but it was no use: communications had mysteriously been cut off. [...] I feared we were on the brink of a coup d’état. [...] I drove like a madman and rushed to Rome. I arrived at Palazzo Chigi at 1:15 a.m. and convened a Supreme Defense Council meeting at 3 a.m., because I was convinced that the state had to give an immediate, strong, and visible response. At 4 a.m. I spoke with Scalfaro at the Quirinale, and I told him, “Mr. President, we must react.” At 8 a.m. I convened the Council of Ministers, and immediately afterward I left for Milan. There was no coup, thank God. But certainly, a veil of mystery remains over that night, and the days that preceded and followed it. Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, from an interview by Massimo Giannini, Ciampi: "La notte del '93 con la paura del golpe", repubblica.it, 29 May 2010. Nel '93, Cosa nostra ebbe in subappalto una vera e propria strategia della tensione che ebbe nelle bombe di Roma, Milano e Firenze soltanto il suo momento più drammatico. [...] L'attentato al patrimonio artistico e culturale dello Stato assumeva una duplice finalità: orientare la situazione in atto in Sicilia verso una prospettiva indipendentista, sempre balzata fuori nei momenti critici della storia siciliana, e organizzare azioni criminose eclatanti che, sconvolgendo, avrebbero dato la possibilità ad un'entità esterna di proporsi come soluzione per poter riprendere in pugno l'intera situazione economica, politica, sociale, che veniva dalle macerie di Tangentopoli. [...] Certamente Cosa nostra, attraverso queste azioni criminali ha inteso agevolare l'avvento di nuove realtà politiche che potessero poi esaudire le sue richieste' In 1993, the Mafia orchestrated a full-scale “strategy of tension,” of which the bombings in Rome, Milan, and Florence were merely the most dramatic manifestation. [...] The attacks on the state’s artistic and cultural heritage served a dual purpose: to steer the situation in Sicily toward a pro-independence perspective—one that had always surfaced during critical moments in Sicilian history—and to organize high-profile criminal acts that, by causing upheaval, would give an external entity the opportunity to present itself as the solution capable of regaining control over the entire economic, political, and social situation emerging from the ruins of Tangentopoli. [...] Certainly, through these criminal actions, Cosa Nostra intended to facilitate the emergence of new political realities that could then fulfill its demands. Pietro Grasso, quoted in Alessandra Ziniti, "Le stragi mafiose del '93 volevano favorire un'entità politica", repubblica.it, 27 May 2010.Paradossalmente, il clamore sanguinario della stagione stragista del '92-'93 segnò la sconfitta storica di Cosa Nostra.Paradoxically, the bloodthirsty upheaval of the 1992–93 wave of terrorist attacks marked the historic defeat of the Cosa Nostra. Antonio Manganelli, quoted in Strage Capaci: Manganelli, oggi Cosa nostra è finita, Atuttadestra.net, 20 May 2012. C'è un atto assolutamente pubblico, la requisitoria del pubblico ministero Luca Tescaroli al processo di appello per la strage di Capaci [...]: voi ricorderete che in quei 50 giorni saltarono in aria i due giudici più famosi d'Italia, a Palermo, cioè Falcone e Borsellino: intere autostrade sventrate, cioè una cosa mai vista; forse in Colombia. E questo pubblico ministero nella requisitoria ha sostenuto, ha ricordato, le parole di alcuni collaboratori di giustizia i quali sostengono che Totò Riina, prima di mettere a punto queste stragi, aveva incontrato alcune persone importanti, come le chiamava lui, e questi pentiti riferiscono che erano Berlusconi e Dell'Utri. [...] e altre indagini ci sono sulle stragi del '93, perché voi ricorderete che nel '93 ci fu quella replica, quando la mafia stranamente cominciò ad occuparsi del patrimonio artistico: cioè, la mafia uscì dal territorio siciliano e cominciò a mettre bombe agli Uffizi, a via Palestro a Milano e [...] a Roma, a San Giovanni in Laterano, per non parlare dell'attentato a Maurizio Costanzo, che è un altro caso clamoroso: è molto interessante, soltanto a livello cronologico, leggere quello che racconta Cartotto, e cioè che Maurizio Costanzo era uno, all'interno della Fininvest, ferocemente contrario alla nascita del partito della Fininvest, cioè alla "scesa in campo" della Fininvest in politica. Insomma, è un bel quadretto.There is a document that is entirely in the public domain: the closing argument delivered by prosecutor Luca Tescaroli at the appeal trial for the Capaci massacre [...]: you will recall that during those 50 days, Italy’s two most famous judges—Falcone and Borsellino—were blown up in Palermo; entire stretches of highway were gutted—something never seen before; perhaps only in Colombia. And this prosecutor, in his closing argument, cited the testimony of several state witnesses who claim that Totò Riina, before planning these massacres, had met with some “important people,” as he called them, and these witnesses report that they were Berlusconi and Dell'Utri. [...] and there are other investigations into the 1993 massacres, because you will recall that in 1993 there was that follow-up, when the Mafia strangely began targeting artistic heritage: that is, the Mafia ventured beyond Sicilian territory and began planting bombs at the Uffizi, on Via Palestro in Milan, and [...] in Rome, at San Giovanni in Laterano, not to mention the attack on Maurizio Costanzo, which is another sensational case: it is very interesting, even just chronologically, to read what Cartotto says, namely that Maurizio Costanzo was someone within Fininvest who was fiercely opposed to the creation of the Fininvest party, that is, to Fininvest’s “entry into the political arena.” In short, it’s quite a picture. Marco Travaglio, quoted in Cristiano Zepponi, Chi ha paura della satira? Luttazzi, Travaglio e il caso Satyricon, InStoria, n. 23 (2009). Walter Veltroni Falcone and Borsellino were killed, with and through the mafia, at least with the active collaboration of an external entity. [...] These were certainly not merely mafia massacres. Indeed, based on the investigations, we should no longer even refer to them in this way. They were massacres carried out by an anti-state entity, which was—or perhaps still is—nestled within and against the state. From an interview by Curzio Maltese, "Dubbi tremendi su quelle morti. Forse un pezzo dello Stato tradì", repubblica.it, 28 May 2010. Is this entity that ordered the massacres of ’92 and ’93 the same one that has always stepped in during periods of transition? Is it the same one behind Piazza Fontana and Piazza della Loggia, the attack on the Milan Police Headquarters by the anarchist Bertoli, and the Moro kidnapping? If not, it is unclear what power could have brought together, in all these bloody episodes, things as seemingly distant as right-wing extremism and the Red Brigades, the secret services and P2, the Banda della Magliana, and perhaps even elements of left-wing terrorism. This tangle of interests that intervenes every time to steer history through coups, through the violence of massacres, intervened [...] in ’92 and ’93, at the dawn of the Second Republic. From an interview by Curzio Maltese, "Dubbi tremendi su quelle morti. Forse un pezzo dello Stato tradì", repubblica.it, 28 May 2010. Interviewer: Can what happened in ’92–’93 be defined as a kind of coup? Veltroni: In short, let’s be clear. Do you believe that Totò Riina was really the head of the Mafia? A Mafia that moves 130 billion euros a year? Do you believe that Riina or Provenzano had ever heard of the Velabro or the Georgofili in their lives? Is it conceivable that the Mafia, with its centuries-old codes, adopted the terrorist language of massacres for the first time since Portella della Ginestra without a strong, political reason? [...] Those were the days of Tangentopoli, the end of the parties of the First Republic, and the devaluation of the lira. We were emerging from that earthquake with the Ciampi government. Ciampi took office in April 1993. On May 27, there was the attack in Florence; on July 27, those in Milan and Rome. Then there was the failed attack at the Olympic Stadium [...]. And then the massacres ended. Why? There are two questions, and the answer, I fear, is one. Why did the Mafia start carrying out the massacres? Why did the Mafia stop carrying out the massacres? From an interview by Curzio Maltese, "Dubbi tremendi su quelle morti. Forse un pezzo dello Stato tradì", repubblica.it'', 28 May 2010. See also State-Mafia Pact Capaci bombing Via D'Amelio bombing Category:1990s in Italy Category:1992 Category:1993