Paolo Borsellino

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Paolo Borsellino (January 19, 1940 Palermo - July 19, 1992 Palermo) was an Italian anti-Mafia magistrate. Born in a middle-class Palermo neighbourhood, la Kalsa, he obtained a degree in law at University of Palermo, with honors, in 1962. Then, after his father's death, he passed the judging exam in 1963. During those years, he worked in many cities inside Sicily (Enna in 1965, Mazara del Vallo in 1967, Monreale in 1969). After he married in 1968, he transferred to his native Palermo in 1975 together with Rocco Chinnici, where he then started his unfinished work to fight and defeat the growing Sicilian Mafia.

His accomplishments included the arrest of six organization members in 1980; for the same year, one of his workmates, the Carabinieri captain Emanuele Basile, was murdered by the Mafia. Because of that event, he was assigned police protection.

During those years, working together with Magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Rocco Chinnici, Borsellino continued his research about the Mafia and its links to political and economical powers in Sicily and Italy. In 1983, Rocco Chinnici was killed by a bomb inside his car. His place in the Antimafia Pool was taken by Antonino Caponnetto. In 1986, Borsellino became head of the Procure of Marsala, continuing there his personal campaign against the Mafia bosses, in the most populated city of the province of Trapani. His links with Giovanni Falcone, remained in Palermo, allowed him to cover the entire Western Sicily for investigations. In 1987, after Caponnetto resigned due to illness, Borsellino was protagonist of a great protest about the unsuccessful nomination of his friend Giovanni Falcone as head of the Antimafia Pool.

Image:Plaque Falcone-Borsellino.gif Image:Attentato.jpg

In 1992, after five years of battling the Mafia, Magistrate Borsellino was killed by a car bomb in Via D'Amelio, Palermo, less than two months after the death of his good friend Falcone. The bomb attack also claimed the lives of five policemen: Agostino Catalano, Walter Cosina, Emanuela Loi, Vincenzo Li Muli, Claudio Traina.

Salvatore Riina, the head of the Corleonesi Mafia Family, is now serving a life sentence in prison for sanctioning the murders of Borsellino and Falcone, as well as for many other crimes.

Paolo Borsellino today is considered as one of the most important magistrates killed by the Sicilian Mafia during the 1980s and 1990s, and he is remembered as one of the main symbols of the battle of the State against the Mafia.

Many schools and public building were named after him, including the Palermo International Airport (now known as Falcone-Borsellino Airport). A memorial by local sculptor Tommaso Geraci is there.

His sister Rita will be candidate of The Union for the next regional election to be held in 2006, after having won the regional primary election.

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Sources

Excellent Cadavers (1995) Alexander Stille, Vintage ISBN 0099594919

The Antimafia (2000) Alison Jamieson, MacMillan Press Ltd ISBN 033380158

Cosa Nostra (2004) John Dickie, Coronet, ISBN 0340824352

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