Word: chiesa
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During the past several years, three judges, five police officers, a journalist specializing in Mafia investigations, and uncounted mobsters have been murdered as rival families have attempted to ward off investigations and settle territorial disputes. In 1982 General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, the prefect of Palermo and the man credited with striking the first serious blows at the Red Brigades, which had terrorized Italy for a decade, was gunned down with his young wife as he drove along one of the city's main streets. The assassination angered even those who had grudgingly tolerated the Mafia. It outraged...
Poor assassins too. Buscetta is reported to have named those involved in Dalla Chiesa's murder and in other killings. He has also drawn a detailed picture of the entire structure of the Sicilian Mafia and explained how its elements relate to each other. The picture surprised some authorities, because it shows an organization that is more collegial than they had imagined...
...WANTED Dalla Chiesa dead, and for good reason. Sicily has become the operational headquarters for the booming international drug traffic racket, from the poppy fields of West Asia to the streets of New York. There's more than just profits in the Mafia business, however, at times the gangsters have been known to dominate local justices in peasant areas. Many believe the Mafia may even control the votes of up to 30 parliamentary deputies. With that much at stake, it is hardly surprising that since 1981,222 people have been identified as victims of organized crime executions in Palermo alone...
...Dalla Chiesa came in the name of peace and order, with a formidable reputation for getting his way. The General had plans to strike hard and reach high--straight to the top, the untouchable dons of the Families. Other Italian officials had tried this sort of thing before: Cesare Terranova, a local magistrate, killed in 1970, Pio La Torre, Secretary of the Communist Party, dispatched in 1980, and the Procurator of the Republic, Gaetano Costa, slain in the same year. Dalla Chiesa stood next in the line of fire, as the only symbolic figure with the guts and skills...
That goal remains distant. The breash carabinieri general himself, shortly after accepting his post as prefect, admitted: "I don't speak of beating [the Mafia], only of containing them." After Dalla Chiesa's assassination, and the flouting of the state's authority that came with it, even containment seems impossible. Last weekend, for example, four new names, including that of a 15-year old boy, were added to the endless list of victims in Palermo's age-old battle for survival against those gangsters who, in John Paul's words, "have spilled so much blood, [and] caused so many dead...