- ROME (Reuters) - Italy's
highest appeals court has annulled 13 verdicts in one of the country's
most infamous Mafia murders, causing widespread dismay days after the 10th
anniversary of the killing.
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- The 13 Mafia bosses had been sentenced along with 21
others over the murder of top anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone, killed
in 1992 by a bomb blast along with his wife and three bodyguards.
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- In its ruling, issued on Friday, the appeals court said
the 13 would have to be tried again.
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- Falcone's murder, which was followed two months later
by the killing of his colleague Paolo Borsellino, shook the nation and
forced a previously slothful state into finally passing a battery of tough
anti-Mafia laws.
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- "I am dismayed. It seems a sentence that goes against
Giovanni (Falcone's) ideas. All the bosses must have been aware the attack
was to be carried out," Falcone's sister, Maria, said on Saturday.
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- The 13 bosses had been handed life sentences for their
complicity in Falcone's murder on the basis of a legal argument at the
center of other major Mafia trials launched by famous Mafia turncoat Tommaso
Buscetta.
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- Buscetta had said decisions on major murders were made
by all top bosses together.
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- Also on Friday, eight Mafiosi sentenced to life imprisonment
for a series of murders in the western Sicilian town of Trapani were freed
due to a procedural error.
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- 'LET OFF HOOK'
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- Although the reasons for the annulments will be published
later, as normally happens in Italy, newspapers speculated that judges
seemed to have let off the hook the bosses who were not physically present
when the murder was decided.
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- The court also confirmed the sentences on the 21 Mafiosi
condemned to life in prison for being the physical executors of the murder.
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- "In any case, this is an historical verdict that
writes an important page of the judicial history of this country...for
the first time we have definitive sentences in a trial that had a profound
impact on our country," Luca Tescaroli, a prosecutor in the trial,
told la Repubblica daily in an interview.
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- "But the (annulment of the 13 sentences) is a fact
that will significantly please Cosa Nostra," he said.
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- The head of parliament's anti-Mafia committee Roberto
Centaro said he was "very surprised" at the court's decision
while he termed "very grave" the release of the eight Mafia killers
let free due to a procedural error.
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- The eight, all with life sentences on appeal, were let
out of prison because the appeals court responded too late to a request
by prosecutors to prolong their jail terms awaiting the end of the trial.
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- Justice Minister Roberto Castelli announced in a statement
on Saturday he had sent inspectors to the judicial offices of Trapani to
"ascertain any responsibilities in yesterday's events, which led to
eight people being let out of prison."
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