A late Sicilian Judge defined Mafia as…

“… oppression, arrogance, greed, self-enrichment, power and hegemony above and against all others. It is not an abstract concept, or a state of mind, or a literal term. It is a criminal organization regulated by unwritten but iron and inexorable rules. The myth of a courageous and generous “man of honour ”must be destroyed, because a “Mafioso” is just the opposite”

Cesare Terranova

Although much struggle has been made to defeat organized crime in Sicily, unfortunately, it still exists. Today it is a phenomenon which has only worsened. Organized crime is a fact of life all over the world. In Sicily, every year, a lot of poor people (men and children) find work with the Mafia because they are hungry and desperate for a job. For this reason the European Commission has destined funds to help Sicilian economic development.

 But the word “Mafia” cannot be identified with an entire  region, that is Sicily, and term “Mafiosi” doesn’t identify the people that live there because it is the worst problem in Sicily but it is not “Sicily”.

During the course of the years many men have tried to defeat this serious problem, losing even their life, among whom we remember: Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

PAOLO BORSELLINO 

Paolo Borsellino was born in 1940, in Palermo. He was an Italian anti-mafia judge. His accomplishments include the arrests of six organization members in 1980.  During those years, working together with Giovanni Falcone and Rocco Chinnici,  Borsellino continued his research on the mafia and its links with political and economical powers in Sicily and Italy. After five years of proclamations and battles against mafia, in 1992 Borsellino was killed by a bomb, while he was coming out of his mother’s flat, in Via D'Amelio, just a few months after the death of his good friend Falcone.

GIOVANNI FALCONE 

Giovanni Falcone was born in 1939 in  Sicily. He was an Italian judge who specialised in prosecuting mafia crimes. He was killed in 1992, only a couple of months before his friend P. Borsellino, on the motorway between Palermo International Airport and the city of Palermo. A bomb exploded on the motorway while Falcone was driving his car and he and his wife were  killed along with his bodyguards who were driving ahead of him.

It is supposed that his murder was ordered by Totò Riina, - like his friend's murder - many other people gained criminal advantages from his death.