Gaspare Spatuzza (Palermo, 8 April 1964) is a Sicilian mafioso from the

Brancaccio Brancaccio is a neighbourhood in the municipality of Palermo, Sicily, in Italy. It is a semi-traditional area of the working class. It was important in the history of the Cosa Nostra. Antimafia priest Pino Puglisi worked in the neighbourhood. He ...

quarter in

Palermo Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan province. The city is noted for its ...

. He was an assassin for the brothers Filippo and

Giuseppe Graviano Giuseppe Graviano (; September 30, 1963) is an Italian mafioso from the Brancaccio quarter in Palermo. He also was one the men of the death squad that murdered Salvatore Contorno's relatives. He is currently serving several life sentences. He an ...

who headed the Mafia family of Brancaccio. After the arrest of the Gravianos in January 1994, he apparently succeeded them as the

regent A regent (from Latin : ruling, governing) is a person appointed to govern a state '' pro tempore'' (Latin: 'for the time being') because the monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge the powers and duties of the monarchy ...

of the Mafia family. He was arrested in 1997 and started to cooperate with the judicial authorities in 2008. In his testimony he claimed that media tycoon and prime minister

Silvio Berlusconi Silvio Berlusconi ( ; ; born 29 September 1936) is an Italian media tycoon and politician who served as Prime Minister of Italy in four governments from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies f ...

made a deal with the Sicilian Mafia in 1993 that put the country "in the hands" of

Cosa Nostra The Sicilian Mafia, also simply known as the Mafia and frequently referred to as Cosa nostra (, ; "our thing") by its members, is an Italian Mafia-terrorist-type organized crime syndicate and criminal society originating in the region of Sicily ...

Mafia killer

Spatuzza had been convicted of six bomb attacks and 40 homicides.Mob witness links Berlusconi to Mafia bombings
Reuters, December 4, 2009 He confessed the murder of the parish priest, father

Pino Puglisi Giuseppe "Pino" Puglisi (, ; 15 September 1937 – 15 September 1993) was a Roman Catholic priest in the rough Palermo neighbourhood of Brancaccio. He openly challenged the Mafia who controlled the neighbourhood, and was killed by them on hi ...

, on 15 September 1993. Puglisi was the pastor of San Gaetano's Parish in the rough Palermo neighbourhood of Brancaccio, and spoke out against the Mafia.Police Officers Investigated for Misdirecting Inquiries into Borsellino Killings
Corriere della Sera, July 29, 2009 Spatuzza himself was arrested in July 1997.
''La Repubblica'', 15 October 2008. On 14 April 1998, Spatuzza, Nino Mangano, Cosimo Lo Nigro and Luigi Giacalone received life sentences for the killing of father Puglisi.
La Repubblica, 20 February 2001 He was also convicted for the murder of the young son of state witness

Santino Di Matteo Santino Di Matteo (born 7 December 1954), also known as ''Mezzanasca'', is an Italian former member of the Sicilian Mafia from the town of Altofonte in the province of Palermo, Sicily, Italy. Di Matteo took part in the killing of Antimafia judge ...

, Giuseppe, who had been kidnapped and killed after 779 days in a failed attempt to force the father to retract his testimony on the killing of Antimafia judge

Giovanni Falcone Giovanni Falcone (; 18 May 1939 – 23 May 1992) was an Italian judge and prosecuting magistrate. From his office in the Palace of Justice in Palermo, Sicily, he spent most of his professional life trying to overthrow the power of the Sicilian ...

.No Protection Programme for Spatuzza
Corriere della Sera, June 16, 2010 At the trial, Spatuzza had also asked Giuseppe Di Matteo's family for forgiveness. In 2012, Spatuzza himself was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his role in the murder. In June 1998, he also received a life sentence for a series of bomb attacks in 1993 in via dei Georgofili in

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico ...

, the

Via Palestro massacre The Via Palestro massacre ( Italian: ''Strage di Via Palestro'') was a terrorist attack carried out by Cosa Nostra in Milan on the evening of 27 July 1993. The explosion of a car bomb in Via Palestro, near the Galleria d'Arte Moderna, resulted in ...

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city ...

and in the churches of

St. John Lateran The Archbasilica Cathedral of the Most Holy Savior and of Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist in the Lateran ( it, Arcibasilica del Santissimo Salvatore e dei Santi Giovanni Battista ed Evangelista in Laterano), also known as the Papa ...

and

San Giorgio in Velabro San Giorgio in Velabro is a church in Rome, Italy, dedicated to St. George. The church is located next to the Arch of Janus in the rione of Ripa in the ancient Roman Velabrum. According to the founding legend of Rome, the church was built ...

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus ( legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, which left 10 people dead and 93 injured as well as damage to centres of cultural heritage such as the

Uffizi The Uffizi Gallery (; it, Galleria degli Uffizi, italic=no, ) is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany, Italy. One of the most important Italian museums ...

Gallery.Cronologia Centro Siciliano di Documentazione "Giuseppe Impastato"
/ref> The bomb attacks were part of a campaign of terror in 1993 against the state to get them to back off in their crackdown against the Mafia after the murders of Antimafia magistrates

and

Paolo Borsellino Paolo Emanuele Borsellino (; scn, Pàulu Borsellino; 19 January 1940 – 19 July 1992) was an Italian judge and prosecuting magistrate. From his office in the Palace of Justice in Palermo, Sicily, he spent most of his professional life trying t ...

in 1992.

Pentito

In October 2008, it became known that he had turned into a witness for the prosecution (

pentito ''Pentito'' (; lit. "repentant"; plural: ''pentiti'') is used colloquially to designate collaborators of justice in Italian criminal procedure terminology who were formerly part of criminal organizations and decided to collaborate with a public ...

) four months earlier after spending 11 years in jail on a strict prison regime. He said he had become religious in prison and, facing "a choice between God and the Cosa Nostra", chose to cooperate and tell the truth. He enrolled in

theology Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing th ...

courses in 2009. He admitted he had stolen the

Fiat 126 The Fiat 126 (Type 126) is a four-passenger, rear-engine, city car manufactured and marketed by Fiat over a twenty-eight year production run from 1972 until 2000, over a single generation. Introduced by Fiat in October 1972 at the Turin Auto Show ...

used for the car bomb that killed Borsellino in the

Via D'Amelio bombing The via D'Amelio bombing ( it, Strage di via D'Amelio) was a terrorist attack by the Sicilian Mafia, which took place in Palermo, Sicily, Italy, on 19 July 1992. It killed Paolo Borsellino, the anti-mafia Italian magistrate, and five members of ...

in Palermo on 19 July 1992. His admission contradicted the declarations of a thug with loose Mafia associations who had confessed to stealing the car. When confronted with Spatuzza's statement, the thug admitted that he had repeated what some investigating officers had forced him to tell the magistrates. Spatuzza's detailed testimony stood up against examination. Spatuzza's declaration led to the re-opening of the trial on Borsellino's murder, which was concluded in 2003.Si riapre il caso Borsellino
, La Stampa, July 14, 2009

Dealing with Berlusconi

Spatuzza's boss

told him in 1994 that future prime minister

was bargaining with the Mafia, concerning a political-electoral agreement between Cosa Nostra and Berlusconi's party

Forza Italia Forza ItaliaThe name is not usually translated into English: ''forza'' is the second-person singular imperative of ''forzare'', in this case translating to "to compel" or "to press", and so means something like "Forward, Italy", "Come on, Ital ...

, in exchange for certain guarantees – such as to stop the bomb terror campaign. Berlusconi entered politics a few months later and won his first term as Prime Minister in 1994. Spatuzza said Graviano disclosed the information to him during a conversation in a bar Graviano owned in the upscale

Via Veneto Via Vittorio Veneto (), colloquially called Via Veneto, is one of the most famous, elegant, and expensive streets of Rome, Italy. The street is named after the Battle of Vittorio Veneto (1918), a decisive Italian victory of World War I. Federico F ...

district of the Italian capital Rome. Berlusconi's right-hand man

Marcello Dell'Utri Marcello Dell'Utri (born 11 September 1941) is a former Italian politician and senior advisor to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Formerly Senator in the Italian Senate.

was the intermediary, according to Spatuzza. Dell'Utri has dismissed Spatuzza's allegations as "nonsense".Lawyer rejects turncoat's claims linking Berlusconi to mafia
Adnkronos International, October 23, 2009 His assertions back up previous statements of the pentito Antonino Giuffrè, who said that the Graviano brothers were the intermediaries between Cosa Nostra and Berlusconi. Cosa Nostra decided to back Berlusconi's Forza Italia party from its foundation in 1993, in exchange for help in resolving the Mafia's judicial problems. The Mafia turned to Forza Italia when its traditional contacts in the discredited

Christian Democrat Christian democracy (sometimes named Centrist democracy) is a political ideology that emerged in 19th-century Europe under the influence of Catholic social teaching and neo-Calvinism. It was conceived as a combination of modern democratic ...

party proved unable to protect its members from the rigours of the law.Berlusconi implicated in deal with godfathers
The Guardian, December 5, 2002 "The statements given by Spatuzza about prime minister Berlusconi are baseless and can be in no way verified," according to Berlusconi's lawyer and MP for the People of Freedom party (''Il Popolo della Libertà'', PdL),

Niccolò Ghedini Niccolò Ghedini (22 December 1959 – 17 August 2022) was an Italian lawyer and politician who was the lawyer of the former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Ghedini was born in Padua on 22 December 1959. A member of the Italian Liberal Par ...

. On December 4, 2009, Spatuzza repeated his accusations in court at the appeal hearing against Dell’Utri, sentenced to 9 years in 2004, for collusion with the Mafia.Mafia witness 'boasted of links to Silvio Berlusconi'
BBC News, December 4, 2009
Daily Telegraph, December 4, 2009 Testifying from behind a screen in the courtroom, surrounded by several bodyguards, he declared: "Graviano told me the name of Berlusconi and said that thanks to him and the man from our home town n apparent reference to Dell' Utriwe have the country in our hands."Berlusconi's top ally jailed for Mafia link
The Observer, December 12, 2004 Dell'Utri told the court that neither he nor Berlusconi had Mafia connections. "It's in the interest of the Mafia to force the collapse of the Berlusconi government because this government has done the most in the fight against organised crime." Berlusconi has denounced the claims of Spatuzza as "vile", and "unfounded and defamatory".
The Independent, December 5, 2009 On 11 December 2009, Filippo Graviano denied the assertions of Spatuzza before the court of Palermo. He said that he had never met Dell'Utri directly or indirectly.
La Repubblica, December 11, 2009Italian Mafia boss Graviano denies Berlusconi link
BBC News, December 11, 2009

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spatuzza, Gaspare 1964 births Living people Gangsters from Palermo Pentiti Sicilian mafiosi sentenced to life imprisonment People convicted of murder by Italy Sicilian mafiosi