First Mafia War
The Mafia war was sparked by a quarrel over a lost heroin shipment and the murder of Calcedonio Di Pisa – an ally of the Grecos – in December 1962. The Grecos suspected the brothers Angelo and Salvatore La Barbera of the attack.
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. Within a period of ten weeks 1,200 mafiosi were arrested, many of whom would be kept out of circulation for five of six years. The Sicilian Mafia Commission was dissolved and of those mafiosi who had escaped arrest – among them Tommaso Buscetta – many went to the United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela. Salvatore "Chichiteddu" Greco fled to Caracas in Venezuela.
The atrocity galvanized the Italian Parliament into implementing a law passed in December 1962 for the constitution of an Antimafia Commission which met for the first time on July 6, 1963. Its final report was submitted in 1976.
Read more about this topic: Ciaculli Massacre
Famous quotes containing the word war:
“... the next war will be a war in which people not armies will suffer, and our boasted, hard-earned civilization will do us no good. Cannot the women rise to this great opportunity and work now, and not have the double horror, if another war comes, of losing their loved ones, and knowing that they lifted no finger when they might have worked hard?”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)