Antimafia Commission - The First Commission

The First Commission

The first Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on the Mafia phenomenon in Sicily (Italian: Commissione parlamentare d'inchiesta sul fenomeno della mafia in Sicilia) was formed in February 1963, in the midst of the First Mafia War, under the presidency of Paolo Rossi of the Italian Democratic Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Democratico Italiano, PSDI). It took a long time to form because newspapers and parliamentarians alike were opposed to the inclusion of Sicilians. It lasted less than three months before the general elections of April 28, 1963.

The second president in the new legislature was the Christian Democrat Donato Pafundi, and was formed on June 5, 1963. Later that month, on June 30, 1963, a car bomb exploded in Ciaculli, an outlying suburb of Palermo, killing seven police and military officers sent to defuse it after an anonymous phone call. The bomb was intended for Salvatore "Ciaschiteddu" Greco, head of the Sicilian Mafia Commission and the boss of the Ciaculli Mafia family. The Ciaculli massacre changed the Mafia war into a war against the Mafia. It prompted the first concerted anti-mafia efforts by the state in post-war Italy. On July 6, 1963 the Antimafia Commission met for the first time. It would take 13 years and two more legislatures before a final report was submitted in 1976.

The PCI claimed the Christian Democrat party (DC) put members on the Commission to stop the inquiry moving too far in the political field, such as the Commission’s vice-president Antonio Gullotti and Giovanni Matta, a former member of the Palermo city council. Matta’s arrival in 1972 created a scandal, he had been mentioned in a report and was summoned to testify in the previous legislature about the role of the Mafia in real estate speculation. The PCI called for his resignation, and in the end the whole Commission under the presidency of Luigi Carraro had to resign and be recomposed without Matta again.