Corleonesi - Division Within The Corleonesi

Division Within The Corleonesi

In the 1990s a division emerged among the Corleonesi, following the arrest of Totò Riina on January 15, 1993. Following the months after Riina's arrest, there were a series of bombings by the Corleonesi against several tourist spots on the Italian mainland – the Via dei Georgofili in Florence, Via Palestro in Milan and the Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano and Via San Teodoro in Rome, which left 10 people dead and 93 injured as well as severe damage to centres of cultural heritage such as the Uffizi Gallery.

Provenzano proposed a new less violent Mafia strategy instead of the terrorist bombing campaign in 1993 against the state to get them to back off in their crackdown against the Mafia after the murders of Anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. Provenzano's new guidelines were patience, compartmentalization, coexistence with state institutions, and systematic infiltration of public finance. Provenzano reportedly re-established the old Mafia rules that had been abolished by Riina under his very eyes when, together with Riina and Leoluca Bagarella, he was ruling the Corleonesi coalition.

Giovanni Brusca – one of Riina's hitmen who personally detonated the bomb that killed Falcone, and became a state witness (pentito) after his arrest in 1996 – has offered a controversial version of the capture of Totò Riina: a secret deal between Carabinieri officers, secret agents and Cosa Nostra bosses tired of the dictatorship of Riina’s faction of the Corleonesi. According to Brusca, Provenzano "sold" Riina in exchange for the valuable archive of compromising material that Riina held in his apartment in Via Bernini 52 in Palermo.

In 2002 the rift within the Corleonesi coalition became clear. On the one hand there were the hardliners in jail – led by Totò Riina and Leoluca Bagarella – and on the other the more moderate, known as the "Palermitani" – led by Bernardo Provenzano and Antonino Giuffrè, Salvatore Lo Piccolo and Matteo Messina Denaro. The incarcerated bosses wanted something to be done about the harsh prison conditions (in particular the relaxation of the 41-bis prison regime) – and were believed to be orchestrating a return to violence while serving multiple life sentences. During a court appearance in July 2002, Leoluca Bagarella suggested unnamed politicians had failed to maintain agreements with the Mafia over prison conditions. "We are tired of being exploited, humiliated, harassed and used as merchandise by political factions," he said.

Antonino Giuffrè – a close confidant of Provenzano, turned pentito shortly after his capture in April 2002 – alleges that in 1993, Cosa Nostra had direct contact with representatives of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi while he was planning the birth of Forza Italia. The deal that he says was alleged to have been made was a repeal of 41-bis prison regime, among other anti-Mafia laws in return for delivering electoral gains in Sicily. Giuffrè's declarations have not been confirmed.

According to press reports, when Provenzano was moved to the high security prison in Terni after his arrest in April 2006, Totò Riina’s son Giovanni Riina, who has been sentenced to life imprisonment for three murders, yelled that Provenzano was a "sbirro" – a popular Italian diminutive expression for a police officer – when Provenzano entered the cell block, insinuating that Provenzano cooperated with the police (maybe referring to the arrest of his father).