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Giuseppe Impastato

Giuseppe Impastato

Mafia
Italy
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Italian version

Iscritto all’albo professionale dopo la morte

WHO WAS

Born in Cinisi, 30 kilometres from Palermo, to a Mafia family, Giuseppe Impastato (Peppino for relatives and friends) still a young man, broke away from his father and started an anti-Mafia political-cultural activity. In 1965, at the age of 17, he founded the magazine L’Idea Socialista and led the struggles of small farmers, construction workers and the unemployed. In 1976 Impastato created Radio Aut, a free self-financed broadcaster with which he denounced the crimes and affairs of the Mafia of Cinisi and neighbouring Terrasini. The most popular program was Onda Pazza, a broadcast in which Peppino mocked mobsters and politicians. In 1978 he ran for municipal elections on the Democrazia Proletaria (Proletarian Democracy) list. Impastato was assassinated on the night between the 8th and the 9th May 1978 with a charge of TNT placed under his body lying on the railroad tracks. He was 30 years old. At first there was talk of a terrorist act in which the attacker himself had been killed, then of suicide. But thanks also to the activities of the Centro Impastato, the Mafia background to the crime was finally identified. On March 5th 2001, the Assize Court of Palermo sentenced the Mafia boss Gaetano Badalamenti to life imprisonment and his deputy Vito Palazzolo to 30 years in prison.

(from Remembrance Day of journalists killed by mafia and terrorism, 2008)

READ HIS STORY

  • Giuseppe Impastato: A Biography
    edited by Enrico Bellavia, taken from Memorial Day of journalists killed by mafia and terrorism, Rome, 2008
  • Biography of Giuseppe Impastato
    published on the website of Casa Memoria Peppino and Felicia Impastato

THE SEARCH FOR THOSE RESPONSIBLE

(Update by Grazia Pia Attolini – 3 May 2020)

  • 1998 – The trial against Vito Palazzolo began and the Order of Journalists constituted a civil party against him. This was a gesture of great importance, considering that Peppino Impastato he worked in the media but was not a member of the Order.
  • 2000 – A committee of the Italian Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission approved a report indicating the responsibility of representatives of the institutions with regard to numerous and documented complaints from family members and the Impastato Centre remaining unanswered. Among others, the committee highlighted the behaviour of the carabinieri general Antonio Subranni, who in 1978, as commander of the operational division of Palermo, conducted the investigation into the death of Impastato.
  • 2001 – The trial of those responsible for the murder of Peppino Impastato ended with the sentencing of the mafioso Vito Palazzolo, to 30 years, and Gaetano Badalamenti, to life imprisonment as instigators. Both died before the appeal process.
  • 2011 – The Palermo Prosecutor’s Office reopened the investigations to discover those responsible for the misdirection carried out to hide the true arrangement of the murder, identified in 2000 by the Parliamentary Commission.
  • 2012 – The collaborator with the justice system, Francesco Di Carlo talked about the request from the Mafia to Subranni to close the investigation in exchange for benefits for his career. The Prosecutor of Palermo requests the investigating judge to close the investigation.
  • 2016 – A new request to have the case dismissed.
  • 2018 – The investigating judge of Palermo identifies general Subranni of the Carabinieri as the person responsible for the misdirection because “a priori, incomprehensibly, unjustifiably and hastily excluded the Mafia line of inquiry”. The investigating judge also spoke of “conspicuous, if not macroscopic anomalies in investigative activities”. But the offences of aiding and abetting for the general of the carabinieri Antonio Subranni, and of complicity for the three non-commissioned officers, Carmelo Canale, Francesco Abramo and Francesco Di Bono, who, on the night of the crime, searched the Impastato house in Cinisi, took place beyond the limitation of criminal prosecution.

RECOGNITION

  • 1978 – A crowd of young people spontaneously showed up at the funeral. They came mostly from Palermo and neighbouring villages, shouting “Peppino is alive” and carrying banners condemning his tragic death and supporting his values. The banner that opened the funeral procession read, “We continue with Peppino’s ideas and courage”. The cultural challenge left by the dead Impastato stirred the conscience of his native country. His fellow citizens voted for him in elections for the City Council and elected him virtually.
  • 1998 – On May 8th 1998, on the twentieth anniversary of Impastato’s death, the University of Palermo posthumously awarded him an honorary degree in Philosophy.
  • 2000 – Directed by Marco Tullio Giordana and with the screenplay by Claudio Fava, the film “The Hundred Steps” was released, bringing the story of Peppino, played by Luigi Lo Cascio, to the attention of the general public. The title refers to the number of footsteps in Cinisi between the home of the Impastato family and that of the Mafia boss Gaetano Badalamenti. The film enjoyed an extraordinary success: it won – among other awards – the prize for best screenplay at the Venice Film Festival and five David di Donatello awards . But above all it marked a watershed. From that moment everyone knew the story of Peppino, even those who had never approached the work of reporting, documentation and research of his family members and the Impastato Centre. Children, young people and adults from all over the country know him and begin to jam “Casa Memoria”, the family home where, since Peppino’s death, his mother Felicia welcomes anyone interested in knowing and embracing his fight for justice.
  • Giuseppe Impastato’s name is included in the Journalist Memorial of the Newseum in Washington which contains the faces and names of journalists killed while doing their work.
  • At the Casa del Jazz in Rome, Impastato is remembered on the plaque of the innocent victims of mafias affixed to the entrance and on the Memorial Panel of Ossigeno per l’Informazione.

The places of remembrance

After the death of his mother Felicia, in 2004 “Casa Memoria” becomes “Casa Memoria Felicia and Peppino Impastato”. In 2013, after renovations, it was transformed into a real museum with unpublished documents and materials, a meeting place, a bookshop and an exhibition area. Today it is a “secular altar”, as Umberto Santino, president of the Impastato Centre defines it: a place where memory meets commitment and culture, where the ideals of freedom, social justice and truth live on.

In 2010, the house of the Mafia boss Gaetano Badalamenti which had been earlier confiscated,  was assigned to the Peppino Impastato association for cultural and social purposes.

In 2012, also thanks to the committed reproach and awareness  of Giovanni Impastato, Peppino’s brother, the Sicilian Region started the process of expropriation, for public use, of the land and the cottage in the Feudo district, where Peppino was killed, in order to make it a site of commemoration. In 2014 it was declared a place of cultural interest. In January 2020, the expropriation procedure moved into an implementation phase. According to the agreement between the Region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, it will become the “National Cultural Centre for the Fight against the Mafia”.

The legacy

After Peppino’s death, his mother Felicia Bartolotta distances herself from the mafia context of the family, forming a civil party against the mafia. From that moment, until her death (2004), Felicia devoted herself entirely to the commitment to defend and transmit the memory of her son and to the struggles to obtain justice. Among the relatives of innocent Mafia victims of the Libera association, Felicia Bartolotta becomes the most popular individual and her example is often cited by Don Luigi Ciotti, a leading advocate of Libera. Around her, her son Giovanni, Peppino’s companions and the members of the Sicilian Documentation Centre, a movement of ideals has developed over the years in Cinisi that today unites thousands of people who carry on the battles of Peppino Impastato.

Groups, associations, collectives, cultural initiatives, songs, drama productions,  books, newspapers, and even streets, squares, parks and schools have been named after him throughout Italy.

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