A photo, a prophecy. Behind Cala d'Oliva, in the untouched hermitage of Cayenne Island, that of Asinara. He, the giant, arms wide open to contain the embrace of two eternal symbols of the fight against the mafia. Yellowed photo: Claudio Lo Curto, in the center, between Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. He, the gentleman judge, knew the two islands, Sardinia and Sicily like few others. He had studied its deep essence, he knew its customs and rules. From Ogliastra to the Sassari prosecutor's office, passing through the great mafia trials in his Sicily.
Sardinian-Sicilian
In Lanusei he landed as a novice, until he became the attorney general of that Tribunal on the edge of the world. After Ogliastra, the return to the land of the mafia. Dossier of blood, from the murder of the magistrate Rocco Chinnici to that car bomb for the judge Carlo Palermo. Yet another mafia massacre. He didn't live safe either. With a "500" loaded with TNT, placed in front of his court in Caltanisetta, they had tried twice to blow it up. He too arrives at the confinement of Asinara in 1985. The maxi trial has to be prepared. Four hundred defendants, hundreds of murders, massacres, a capillary network of business and organized crime that goes beyond continents, almost a universal network to be undermined. He is there, in that exclusive and forbidden strip of an uncontaminated and fascinating land, together with Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
The cayenne of the Asinara
After all, Asinara was in the state's imagination that tiny and inviolable island where to segregate at the same time the "bosses of the bosses" and also the number one in the fight against the mafia. The first blocks for real and they, the magistrates of the anti-mafia pool, forced, for protection and safety, to stay close to them. Some awaiting sentencing, others intent on circumscribing crimes and sentences. An island-prison, white donkeys, an untouched scrub of mastic trees and junipers, everything under control. A real paradise on earth in front of the pearl of La Pelosa, the beach of Stintino. Claudio Lo Curto could never, not even remotely, think that sooner or later those mafia stories could have crossed with the uncontaminated land of the island of Sardinia.
Mantra failed
After all, everyone said it: the mafia in Sardinia cannot take root. In some cases those certainties became slogans, free of charge most of the time. A mantra, almost a propitiatory rite to ward off the ghost. All this until someone in the palaces of Rome decided to exchange Asinara with Sardinia. The calculation was ruthless and unscrupulous: we close the bunker island and open a much larger one, that of Sardinia, making it a widespread prison for mafia bosses. Confusing, in fact, an island area, as the norm “preferably” indicates, with an island region. In short, in the state offices an interpretation as foolish as it is foolish has been pre-established: we do prisons for mafia bosses in Sardinia.
Deal prisons
There were land deals to be bought, contracts to be awarded. There was, above all, the silence of many with respect to that cursed acronym that introduced for the first time in Sardinia the code of the mafia bosses: 41 bis, or the hard prison, the one reserved for Riina, Provenzano, Cutolo, Madonia, Bagarella. Those who had to be really isolated given the ability to lead clans and gangs even from inside a prison. Therefore, in the most ancient detention logic, isolated, uninhabited islets were needed, forbidden to any contact.
Sardinia is not Pianosa
The foolishness of the state, on the other hand, in a moment, with a coup d'état with many accomplices, transformed all of Sardinia, from north to south, into a penitentiary island, as if a land of one and a half million inhabitants were Pianosa or Gorgona. In any case, an attempt was made to stop that wicked choice, but nothing could be done in front of those who thought of solving the issue of hard prison by sending a third of the mafia leaders to Sardinia, from 41 bis to the inmates destined for High Security. Claudio Lo Curto knew those characters destined to land on the island like few others. Despite the imposition of silence and state coercion, he did not hesitate to denounce, "apertis verbis", with competence and authority, the nefarious danger that was foreshadowing with the arrival of the 41 bis in Sardinia.
Inauspicious prophecy
Words of fire, almost a prophecy, if it had not already been a serious and complete analysis. Shortly before his death, in 2017, Claudio Lo Curto sipped the words: «With the 41 bis, relatives will arrive, even five or six, and then other people, who will always be different. They will arrive ten or fifteen days before and they will also leave ten days later. The time it takes to monitor the terrain and make friends, contacts. They will make themselves known, they will launder money, they will grant loans at usury rates, and perhaps, following the impossibility of payment by the creditor, they will take over the company ».
Cheeky pizzini
A prophecy as disturbing as it is far-sighted: «These mafia bosses will need to find apartments a stone's throw from the prison. The objective will be twofold, to speak with the leaders of the leaders and translate the messages into action, including the occupation of new territories. Receive pizzini from the bosses behind bars, seeing with a single gesture, with an unencodable facial expression, messages that few or no one will be able to translate ». The man who had shared the fight against the mafia with Falcone and Borsellino knew what he was talking about: "In Sardinia - he explained in 2015 - there will be a phenomenon in many ways similar to that which emerged at the time of forced stays, with the sending of prominent members of organized crime to unlikely lands. Serving sentences far from the reference territory is a huge mistake ».
The red alert
On the eve of the new state blitz to send 92 other prominent bosses to Sardinia, in the Cagliari-Uta prison, that dramatic prediction, advanced by an anti-mafia magistrate, in the general silence of the institutions, today takes the form of a serious alarm . The Anti-Mafia Investigation Department puts it in black and white. It is no coincidence that the six-monthly report of the body of the Ministry of the Interior, drawn up immediately after the advent of Covid, is articulated with clear words and without half measures, all aimed at the Sardinia case: "It seems necessary to constantly monitor the risk of infiltration into the socio-economic fabric as well as preventive and repressive activities aimed at contrasting other illicit trafficking. An interest in undertaking these criminal activities could be expressed by the families of the Mafia inmates restricted to the penitentiary institutes of the island, who approach their relatives to avoid the so-called “commuting for reasons of interviews”.
The disembarkation of relatives
To worry the investigators are not those who occupy the maximum security cells, but the invasive and structural relationship with those "family-followers" who pour in a stone's throw from the places of potential interviews. In essence, the opportunity to stay close to the "men of honor", according to the most violent code, combines the profit with the "pleasure" of expanding the range of action and power, from new markets to low-cost labor, direct consequence of the economic crisis. The men of the Dia do not speak theoretically. When they put pen to paper, they already know what happened around the Bancali prison in Sassari. They know perfectly well the degree of penetration in the Oristano area, where, by now, the Massama prison, on the agricultural outskirts of Oristano, is monopolized by the Camorra and 'Ndrangheta, with hundreds of members of the most dangerous clans. Monitoring is also delicate in Gallura. The Nuchis prison, on the slopes of Tempio, is the scene of continuous contacts with the territory, with increasingly alarming reports of permanent transfers of the mafia group following the bosses in prison. It is not enough, however. Among the documents there are also those who plan to transform Sardinia into the new operational base of organized crime.
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