1993
July 27, Milan
The via Palestro massacre
In May 1993, some mafiosi from Brancaccio and Corso dei Mille (Giuseppe Barranca, Gaspare Spatuzza, Cosimo Lo Nigro, and Francesco Giuliano) proceeded to grind and package more explosives in a run-down house on Corso dei Mille, always made available by Antonino Mangano (head of the Roccella family). In mid-July, the two bales of explosives were hidden in a double bottom of Pietro Carra’s truck (a haulier connected to the Brancaccio mafia circles), which transported them to Arluno, in the province of Milan, together with Lo Nigro, who brought a fuse and other materials: in Arluno, Carra and Lo Nigro were joined by someone who led them to a country lane, where they unloaded the explosives. On July 27, Lo Nigro and Giuliano arrived in Rome from Milan to also organize attacks on the churches of Rome.
In the evening of July 27, local police officer Alessandro Ferrari noticed a Fiat Uno (which was later found to have been stolen a few hours earlier) parked in via Palestro, in front of the Pavilion of Contemporary Art, from which whitish smoke was emanating. He requested the intervention of the fire brigade, who confirmed the presence of a bomb inside the car; however, a few moments later, the car bomb exploded, killing police officer Alessandro Ferrari, and firefighters Carlo La Catena, Sergio Pasotto, and Stefano Picerno, as well as Moroccan immigrant Moussafir Driss, who was hit by a piece of sheet metal while sleeping on a bench.
The blast wave shattered the windows of surrounding homes and also damaged some rooms of the nearby Modern Art Gallery, causing the collapse of the external wall of the Pavilion of Contemporary Art. During the night, a gas pocket formed following the rupture of a pipeline caused by the explosion, which caused extensive damage to the pavilion, the paintings it housed, and the surrounding Villa Reale.
Investigations and Trials
The investigations reconstructed the execution of the via Palestro massacre based on the statements of collaborators of justice Pietro Carra, Antonio Scarano, Emanuele Di Natale, and Umberto Maniscalco: in 1998, Cosimo Lo Nigro, Giuseppe Barranca, Francesco Giuliano, Gaspare Spatuzza, Luigi Giacalone, Salvatore Benigno, Antonio Scarano, Antonino Mangano, and Salvatore Grigoli were recognized as the material perpetrators of the via Palestro massacre in the sentence for the massacres of 1993. However, in the same sentence, it was stated: “Unfortunately, the failure to identify the base of operations in Milan and the individuals who, in this city, certainly provided logistical support and manual assistance to the massacre, prevented penetration into those realities which, as demonstrated by the investigation conducted in other cases examined by this Court, were more promising from the point of view of the external verification.”
In 2002, based on the statements of collaborators of justice Carra and Scarano, the Florence prosecutor’s office ordered the arrest of brothers Tommaso and Giovanni Formoso (“men of honor” from Misilmeri), identified by the investigations as those who helped Lo Nigro unload the explosives in Arluno and who materially carried out the via Palestro massacre. In 2003, the Milan Assize Court sentenced the Formoso brothers to life imprisonment, and this sentence was confirmed in the subsequent two degrees of judgment.
In 2008, Gaspare Spatuzza began collaborating with justice and provided new statements about the material perpetrators of the via Palestro massacre: in particular, Spatuzza reported that he, Cosimo Lo Nigro, Francesco Giuliano, Giovanni Formoso, and brothers Vittorio and Marcello Tutino (mafiosi from Brancaccio) participated in a meeting where the groups were decided to operate on Rome or Milan to carry out the attacks; according to Spatuzza, Formoso and the Tutino brothers operated in Milan, and initially he, Lo Nigro, and Giuliano joined them to help unload the explosives and steal the Fiat Uno used in the attack, then returned to Rome to carry out the church bombings.
Later, Spatuzza also exonerated Tommaso Formoso, stating that only his brother Giovanni participated in the attack, who had borrowed the villa in Arluno from Tommaso under false pretenses where the explosives were unloaded: however, in April 2012, the Brescia Assize Court rejected Tommaso Formoso’s request for a trial review, stating that Spatuzza’s statements alone were insufficient. Also based on Spatuzza’s statements, in 2012, the Florence prosecutor’s office ordered the arrest of fisherman Cosimo D’Amato, cousin of Cosimo Lo Nigro, who was accused of supplying the explosives, extracted from war remnants recovered at sea, used in all the bombings of 1992-1993, including the via Palestro massacre. In 2013, D’Amato was sentenced to life imprisonment in an expedited trial by the preliminary judge of Florence; the sentence was confirmed on appeal in 2014 and, two years later, by the Court of Cassation; in 2015, D’Amato himself began collaborating with justice and confirmed his involvement in the supply of explosives.
In 2014, the District Anti-Mafia Directorate of Milan issued a pre-trial detention order against Marcello Tutino for the crime of massacre because Spatuzza accused him of being the “basista” (base person) of the via Palestro attack. The following year, the Milan Assize Court acquitted Tutino because Spatuzza’s statements alone were considered insufficient for a conviction; the acquittal was confirmed on appeal and by the Court of Cassation.