Today, July 19, 33 years after the Via D’Amelio massacre in which Judge Paolo Borsellino and his escort agents Agostino Catalano, Emanuela Loi, Vincenzo Li Muli, Walter Eddie Cosina, and Claudio Traina lost their lives, the La Tazzina della Legalità Association, in collaboration with the Municipal Administration of Isola di Capo Rizzuto led by Mayor Maria Grazia Vittimberga, will hold a stage of the Legality Relay at 7:00 pm in Le Castella.
An intense and heartfelt moment, in which memory will be joined by the duty of truth and denunciation. Nicola Catanese, then Borsellino’s chief escort, will be with us; on the morning of July 19, 1992, he went to the magistrate’s house. The flip of a coin changed his fate: he decided to give up his shift. That choice, the result of chance, saved his life.
But we do not want this to be yet another sterile commemoration, as politics too often does, talking about legality without ever having the courage to shed light on the many, too many shadowy areas that still surround that massacre. Just think of the story of Marshal Lombardo, Borsellino’s most trusted man, who died in circumstances never clarified in the parking lot of the Regional Command of the Carabinieri in Palermo, after collecting a very delicate testimony in Opera prison from a repentant who had asked to speak only with him.
A death hastily filed away as suicide, despite the pistol found between his legs – a dynamic incompatible with a shot to the temple, according to ballistic experts – and a farewell letter that the family immediately considered fake, a thesis later confirmed by a handwriting expert.
And what about the Red Diary, symbol of a denied truth, which his brother Salvatore Borsellino has been searching for decades? A mystery still unsolved, a shame for a Republic that should be founded on justice.
We do not accept this.
We of the “La Tazzina della Legalità” Association do not just want to commemorate, we want to denounce. We want truth for Borsellino, for his escort, for Marshal Lombardo, for all the servants of the State betrayed by that very State they were supposed to defend.
We invite the citizens, institutions, and civic organizations to participate. Because memory without justice is just rhetoric. And we choose to stand on the side of courage, not silence.
La Tazzina della Legalità Association