2023-04-25 20:19:07
From the landing in Sicily in ’43 to Matteo Messina Denaro, the hidden truths, the mud, the interweaving between the underworld and pieces of the state in the essay by an uncomfortable journalist (Solferino)
It is 8.20 on January 16, 2023. The Ros military surrounded the La Maddalena clinic in Palermo at dawn: one of the best known in the city for cancer treatments. The carabinieri do not suspect but rather the certainty that the patient Andrea Bonafede, who is waiting to have a chemotherapy session, is actually the mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro who has been on the run for thirty years. The certainty given by a detail first encountered with the platform data electronics from the Ministry of Health and then materially: the real Bonafede at his home in Campobello di Mazara and who is now in the Palermo clinic the false Bonafede, i.e. the boss who is sick with cancer.
The fatal mistake was made by his relatives, who told about the oncological disease on the phone. The feedback started from this information. Now the circle comes full circle on the most wanted mafioso. The carabinieri are upon him and he, giving up the mask, tired, says: My name is Matteo Messina Denaro. End. Perhaps.
Approximately 9:00. Paolo Borrometi, journalist, co-director of the Time.news press agency, on the phone with the director and author Pif. They chat. They joke. Call waiting: a well-informed source on mafia facts. The journalist doesn’t answer and thinks: I’ll call back. But the phone call comes a second time. A third. There’s something wrong. A message arrives on WhatsApp: We have taken Messina Denaro. He reads it aloud. Pif says: Shit, not possible. Even Borrometi incredulous: Let me check. He verifies. all true. So: After a few minutes I type for Time.news the flash of my life, the one I’ve always dreamed of: “Mafia: Matteo Messina Denaro arrested”. It is 9:20 minutes and 36 seconds. In agencies, the latter also count.
Not just in agencies. Even in the pizzas. Even in reports. Even in misdirections. Also in mascariamento that is that elusive strategy that conceals, masks, confuses, diverts, discredits. Otherwise Matteo Messina Denaro how would the fugitive for over thirty years in his house have done? There was a need for support, aid, collaboration. Not only of Andrea Bonafede, an old childhood friend of u Siccu, not only of Giovanni Luppino, the boss’s driver, but of many others that Paolo Borrometi calls with a precise definition that gives the title to his latest book: Traitors. How mud and misdirection have marked Italian history (Solferino).
a text as documented and scrupulous as it is bitter and courageous because it shows how right Alberto Arbasino was when he published in 1980 A country without: a country without truth and, therefore, without a future? Well, reading Traitors doubt can come because Italy has always seemed the country of mysteries and inconclusiveness in which the search for the truth is more than difficult and is perceived as useless. Very often, if not always, those who work to bring clarity find themselves dealing with discrediting and calculated confusion.
This happened to Giovanni Falcone, when they said that the Addaura bomb had planted it himself, and of the red diary, mysteriously disappeared, by Paolo Borsellino it was said that it would be a parasol. While of Don Giuseppe Diana – Paolo Borrometi recalls in the dramatic pages of the book – it was said that he was a Camorrista. Still. Peppino Impastato? A terrorist.
The red thread of misdirection and arbitrariness unites Italian history from one end of its republican life to the other, so much so that Traitors
begins with the landing of the Americans in Sicily in 1943 – and with the figures of Lucky Luciano, Calogero Vizzini, Salvatore Giuliano – to reach the cancer of Messina Denaro passing through Portella della Ginestra, via Fani, the Italicus, the Rapido 904, Bologna, Capaci, via D’Amelio. As if Italy has a dark side. A tumor. Surely, in this country, yes, the truth has a very high cost for those who seek it.
Going beyond the shadow line, the Sicilian journalist risked his life. The pages of his book are stormy and even autobiographical. On April 16, 2014, Paolo Borrometi’s life changed. He was massacred with kicks: Now do you understand? You deal with your dicks. Do you understand?
From that moment Borrometi finished not only under escort but also under delegitimization. Not only him, but also his family and his father’s memory. His front door caught fire and death threats haunted him. However, the uncomfortable journalist, who was once a stutterer, has not lost his word because there is nothing stronger, more explosive than freedom.
April 25, 2023 (change April 25, 2023 | 8:15 pm)
© Time.News
#Traitors #book #Paolo #Borrometi #time.news