“Psycho-labile magistrates, women in robes unstable in their judgments on family and children”: the insults in the textbook of the retired Sapienza professor

Palermo, 6 August (Adnkronos) – “In a normal country, on various occasions, the trial for the murder of my grandfather could have been reopened, in consideration of statements by various people, talked about and not, but disruptive. Instead, a suspicious silence has fallen, embarrassing in my opinion. As embarrassing, in my opinion, is the whole affair of my grandfather. Because the problem is that the dead are dead and the living have a family, they have to make a career. And my grandfather was a character who created embarrassment. When he was alive, because he did his duty at a time when many did not, because it was objectively demanding, and even more so when he was dead. Because nothing can be taken from him without bringing out the hypocrisy of a large part of the judiciary and civil society. My grandfather resisted every type of clientelism”. Speaking in an interview with Adnkronos is Gaetano Costa, namesake nephew of Gaetano Costa, the Chief Prosecutor of Palermo killed by the mafia on August 6, 44 years ago. On the sidelines of the commemoration in via Cavour, at the site of the murder, right in the center, the eldest nephew of the magistrate killed by the mafia, explains: “In recent years we have often sent messages, even to the judiciary, but unfortunately, they have always fallen on deaf ears”. When asked to whom those “messages” were addressed, Gaetano Costa junior replies: “Sometimes to the judiciary, because we have noticed, with a certain disdain, a poorly concealed indifference towards new procedural developments that have emerged…”.

No one has been convicted for the death of Prosecutor Costa, despite a trial being held at the Catania Court of Assizes, which acquitted the alleged perpetrator, but ascertained the context of the crime by identifying it in the gray area between business, politics and organized crime. Just today, on the occasion of the 44th anniversary of the murder, the family of the Prosecutor published a polemical obituary in the city newspaper: “In the disheartening oblivion of the institutions, the Foundation that is honored to bear his name, does not cease to remember his sacrifice for the affirmation of ethics, moral rigor, love for freedom and legality, values ​​not only to be preserved but to be cultivated every day with a sense of responsibility and respect”.

“We have chosen a ‘special’ obituary – explains Costa – precisely because we want to send messages, we hope that this time they can be collected…”. The heads of the Palermo judiciary were present at the commemoration today. From the Attorney General Lia Sava to the President of the Court of Appeal Matteo Frasca, to the Chief Prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia. But also other civil and military authorities.

This is the first anniversary without Michele Costa, the son of the Prosecutor and father of Gaetano Costa, who died in recent months. Lawyer Michele Costa had always fought for the truth about the murder of the magistrate. Until the end. An unpunished murder, 44 years later, that of Gaetano Costa. The Prosecutor, who arrived in Palermo in ’78, a few months before being killed, signed in his own hand about fifty custody orders for as many bosses who, otherwise, would have been released due to the expiration of their prison terms. His deputies, with one exception, refused to sign the measures.

In the short period of his management of the Palermo Public Prosecutor’s Office, he initiated a series of very delicate investigations in which, even with the limited means at his disposal at the time, he attempted to penetrate the patrimonial sanctuaries of the Mafia. In fact, he secretly commissioned the then Colonel of the Guardia di Finanza Marino Pascucci to carry out “in-depth investigations” on precise connections of economic, financial, banking and corporate interests in a series of billion-dollar contracts managed by the companies of the wealthy entrepreneur and Mafia boss Rosario Spatola. He had spoken about these investigations with his friend, the investigating counselor Rocco Chinnici, and the two, to avoid prying ears in the same courthouse, would meet in the blocked elevator. “It’s very strange to be here without my father,” says the young Costa. “We’ve been waiting for justice for 44 years. On the commemorative plaque, behind me, the word mafia appeared only last year, after 43 years. My grandmother, Rita Bartoli Costa, died believing in justice. My father tried. Don’t ask me.”

And he says: “A trial is not important because it restores justice, it is important because it puts a point on a question and that point allows us to move forward. And that point has been denied to us and others and that has confined us in a limbo, where we live, with other victims, from Cassarà to Chinnici to Cesare Terranova. Deaths that were not accidental. Because with their arrival there was the risk that things in Palermo could change”.

“During these commemorations that I always experience with difficulty – adds Gaetano Costa junior – we often talk about heroes. In my opinion it is a semantic trap, a deliberate error. Elevating a person who did his duty to the rank of hero serves subtly to relaunch everything, and I would take cowards, those who do not do their duty, to the rank of ‘normal people’. This is a complicated story. It would be worth reopening that chapter, not only because many things have emerged but because in those years many things were happening. My grandfather’s story does not allow us to reassure ourselves”.

“We know that my grandfather was betrayed by his own colleagues – adds Gaetano Costa – who should have protected him and who pointed him out for mafia revenge, as Sciascia said. We don’t know if he died because of the arrest warrants, we don’t know if he died because of all those public procurement projects, or because of that particular situation that Palermo was experiencing, we will never know. And we have to live with it. But you can be pessimistic but in your will you have to be optimistic, as someone better than me said”. And he concludes: “Who knows if a good magistrate won’t decide to wake up and reopen the case. There are good people, we’ll see…”. (by Elvira Terranova)