I am posting this video containing Sonia Alfano’s speech at the "Break the mafia" conference held on Tuesday 11 December 2007.
I thank the guys from antenneattive.org who made available their recording of the event.


Text:
S.Alfano: It makes one angry, extremely angry. That which my family and I have had to live through is something that I would not wish on my worst enemy.
My family was a perfectly normal one, where my father was a secondary school technical education teacher with a hobby involving journalism and news reporting, while my mother was a nurse, now retired, working at a hospital in Messina Province. This passion for journalism caused my father, in a very short space of time, to switch between court reports and sport reports and he began writing and telling stories about what was happening in our province, which offered much as regards court reporting.
G.Barbacetto: He evidently then became somewhat of a problem for someone.
S.Alfano: Yes. Let me start by saying that Messina has always been renowned, and still is to some, as the “babba” province, which means “stupid”, where there is no mafia but where everything happened, in reality.
G.Barbacetto: Therefore, where there is no mafia, all the people are “babbi”, in other words, fools?
S.Alfano: Yes. If we take into account that our “babba” province played host to mafia bosses of the calibre of Nitto Santapaola, Bernardo Provenzano and Gerlando Alberti Junior, I think it is fair to say that our province was anything other than stupid. Building up this Messina only served to create a golden paradise for people on the run. I cannot say that they were on the run in that area because, above all Gerlando Alberti Junior and Nitto Santapaola were unfortunately permanent residents of the area, thanks to the complacency and laid back attitude of the institutions. In the case of Gerlando Alberti Junior, this even included the forces of law and order.
Nitto Santapaola stayed at Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto for a number of months, just thirty metres away from my house and suddenly, around the time that my father was killed, there was a spate of eavesdropping and wire-tapping, which picked up certain conversations between Santapaola and certain officers of the Carabinieri Corps. He was regularly escorted by the carabinieri to the motorway tollgate, they accompanied him to his meetings with the faithful and he was also regularly escorted into the hinterland where he went on hunting expeditions with a colonel in the Carabinieri Corps.
G.Barbacetto: But where did you get these ides and where does the information come from?
S.Alfano: For many years now, I have waited for justice to take its course after what happened to me. I had turned 21 years of age just two months before I saw my father leaving home at 21h30 on the eighth of January, on his way to pick up my mother from the hospital, and I asked him whether he would be coming straight back home or whether he was planning an evening out. He answered that he would be coming straight back home. At about 22h20 I heard the sound of my father’s car, which was particularly noisy, then I heard the sound of the two latches opening, then the hatches and finally the entrance doors to the house. However, immediately thereafter, I also heard one latch snapping shut, a single latch opening and one door closing. This alerted me and I immediately went towards my mother, I opened the door for her and, with a petrified look in her eyes, she told me that my father had hung back for a moment to look outside and sent her inside. Telling her to lock herself in. Never before had my father ever done such a thing.
The fact remains that we knew what we were up against, given that only two months before my father had received a death threat and was told by the then Head of AIAS that, if he did not stop writing, he would have him killed by the 20th January, the date of the Festival of Saint Sebastian, the patron saint of Barcellona.
We crossed off the days, one by one, just like a countdown. The moment when my father did not come upstairs with my mother, I became concerned, he was not answering his mobile phone and I clearly remember hearing the sound of sirens wailing, only to fall silent as they approached our house. Life in Barcellona was normal, if you consider that, by the 5th January, there had already been 7 murders.
G.Barbacetto: Some people called the place “Barcellona pool of blood”.
S.Alfano: Precisely.
A.Mascali: What did your father write that was so troublesome?
S.Alfano: He wrote much about the AIAS, an Italian aid association for the spastic, which was, in reality, purchasing furniture at inflated prices, and about cases of fraud against the EU with regard to citrus fruit. Certain businessmen were involved at the time, and still are to this day, such as Giovanni Sindoni. I am naming names and I accept full responsibility for doing so, because the only way to fight the mafia is by naming names. They were filling the trucks with oranges, taking them to the weighbridge, after which they were supposed to go for pulping. This did not happen. They would, in fact, bring the goods back, delivering it to the places that they knew, selling them and claiming EU funds as if they had destroyed the goods.
Then he wrote about international arms smuggling, which, soon after my father’s death, resulted in an inquiry being set up, split into three sections, and the only one that is still ongoing, after 14 years, appears to be the one in the Court of Milan.
He was your typical assault reporter. He knew the area and the all the families in Barcellona, however, I believe that what cost eventually cost him his life was having recognised Nitto Santapaola and having mentioned this fact to the wrong magistrate, namely Olindo Canali, believing him to be a friend.
My father was convinced that every Friday evening in Barcellona, after 22h00 and nearby our house, there was a meeting attended by a group of people that he thought may be members of a Masonic Lodge, under cover of Scottish rites. I must tell you that there are far too many Masonic Lodges operating in the Barcellona and Messina area.
Given that justice appeared not to be forthcoming, I have been obliged to roll up my sleeves in an attempt to give my father back some of his dignity, because the only that was said about my father is that his was a crime of passion.
A.Mascali: This was said often.
G.Barbacetto: After physical death comes the denigration.
S.Alfano: I reached rock bottom when, in June of 1995, while being cross examined in a courtroom, the defence attorney representing my father’s assassins asked me what type of relationship I had with my father. The allusion, and the inherent allegation that perhaps my father had molested me did not last for very long.
At that very moment I realised that the only people who had my father’s dignity, and above all his memory at heart, were the members of his family. We rolled up our sleeves and did everything in our power, to the point where we were unfortunately obliged to take over from the investigators and the forces of law and order, who simply maintained that there were no new developments, even after the conclusion of various court cases in which the boss, Giuseppe Gullotti, and the killer, Antonino Merlino were convicted.
G.Barbacetto: An investigation was held, court cases were held and the actual killer, as well as his immediate Principal were condemned, is that right?
S.Alfano: Only the military Principal was convicted, in other words, the man who gave permission for the murder to be committed.
As regards the boss, Gullotti, who returned to the “babba” province, which is not really “babba”, I am certain that no one is aware, other than Minister Di Pietro, that the remote control used to set off the explosion that blew up Judge Falcone and his escort was provided by none other than Giuseppe Gullotti, closed in a wooden box on the back of a truck transporting a mare that was being taken to the Palermo area, for delivery to none other than Brusca. No one is aware of this, perhaps because someone has a vested interest in keeping Barcellona “babba”. There is very little in the way of “babba”, however, there is much that is sad, corrupt and devious. I did everything that I was able to do.
G.Barbacetto: Now, given that an investigation was carried out, after the man who pulled the trigger, and his military Principal have been convicted, why can you and your family not let the matter rest? What is still missing?
S.Alfano: We will not rest until those that made the decision behind the crime are chucked in jail, and by that I don’t mean the mafia bosses that we are often led to believe were responsible. I can assure you about the people who actually made the decision to kill my father, is that the one is now sitting in Parliament at Montecitorio, and the other wear a collar and tie because he works in some or other court department. In any event, there is a very strong alliance in place between the judiciary, the institutions and politics, which I have been attempting to uncover for a long time, however, I realised I was alone, with very few volunteers like myself, who have tried to turn the spotlight onto Barcellona.
A.Mascali: You are now making some very harsh and serious allegations. Is there any ongoing investigation underway regarding the matter of an outsider or hidden Principal?
S.Alfano: The Messina district’s anti-mafia Prosecutors Office has been conducting certain ongoing investigations since February 2003, opened entirely on the basis of my testimony. If they have not yet decided to archive the investigation, since 2003, perhaps Mastella will see to it after this event, although I certainly hope not. Nevertheless, I asked Mastella to intervene with regard to the Messina issues and he asked about the Messina and Sicily issues. To be precise, in a telephone conversation with the very same Mastella, which appears in this month’s issue of Micromega, I asked him why he has come out so strongly against De Magistris, placing him under the microscope with no thoughts of continuity, rather than focussing his full attention on Sicily? I cannot remember how many years have passed since we last had a Public Prosecutor in Catania, Caltanissetta is on the verge of shutting down, something that would, without a doubt, please the Mafia and, perhaps you are unaware that Messina has a general Prosecutor from the Appeal Court of the Court of Assizes, Franco Antonio Cassata, who works in the courtroom and dispenses justice and who also has relationships with a number of very shady characters. There is a report drafted by the Carabinieri of Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, which places him in one of the local squares, publicly talking to Venerina Rugolo, the wife of mafia boss-in-hiding, Gullotti. The Judge was called before the Upper Council of the Magistrature, where he proceeded to justify his actions by saying that everyone knows everyone in Barcellona, and that he had only stopped to caress the child. Pity that there was no child in sight and that he had obviously stopped to talk to the mafia boss’ wife.
I think that these are the magistrates that should be sent away rather than those that are currently under investigation.