Clare Longrigg at the Guardian
offers a piece on the bloody reign of Salvatore “Toto” Riina, the Cosa Nostra "Boss of
Bosses" in Sicily.
“Riina was still the boss of
Cosa Nostra when he died. No one had taken his place after his arrest. It is
unprecedented for the position not to be filled when the boss is arrested,”
said Roberto Saviano, the author of Gomorrah.
That Totò Riina held on to
his position as “boss of bosses” while in isolation in prison for the last 24
years of his life is remarkable. But in mafia culture, symbolism is important,
and Riina, who died on Friday, was able to make his views known via signals,
messages and intermediaries. From prison, he issued threats against the
anti-mafia prosecutor Nino Di Matteo, who now lives under armed protection.
Riina’s sons, one of whom has been convicted of four murders, have allegedly
found ways to communicate on behalf of their father.
Why has there been no
successor?
Riina’s leadership of Cosa
Nostra was a reign of terror. Nicknamed “the Beast”, he was utterly ruthless
and extremely violent. “One of the ironies about Riina’s reign was that he held
total power, he centralised power to an unprecedented extent, and his power was
a catastrophe for Cosa Nostra,” said John Dickie, the author of Mafia Republic.
Riina’s war against the state
was part of a plan to create a new order of mafia power in politics and business.
His ambition was shocking. With a series of high-profile assassinations and a
bombing campaign on the mainland in the early 1990s, he planned to bring the
state to its knees and force it to make a pact with his organisation. His
tactic was to make Cosa Nostra a force to be reckoned with, and so brought it
out into the open in a way it had never been before.
But Riina’s war almost
destroyed Cosa Nostra.
You can read the rest of the
piece via the below link:
