Missing red diary at heart of Italy's dark
More than 20 years after anti-mafia hero Paolo Borsellino was killed by a huge bomb, his missing diary is still at the heart of one of Italy's murkiest and most enduring mysteries.
Borsellino kept the red police diary always at his side, even in bed, and used it for jotting down evidence after another powerful bomb killed his friend and fellow magistrate Giovanni Falcone in May 1992, 57 days before his own death at age 52.
The two men are Italy's biggest modern heroes, a picture of them together often seen on posters on city streets.
Now the contents of the red diary are at the center of a trial that alleges a dark pact was struck between the state and the mafia, a pact that Borsellino's bereaved brother says stained Italy's "second republic" at its very birth.
They say the negotiations were aimed at stopping mafia attacks against state targets by agreeing to more lenient treatment for jailed gangsters and lighter sentences.
Several of the mafia's alleged demands have been met since 1993, including the closing of the bleak Pianosa and Asinara island prisons where many mobsters served time, though no connection has been proven.
Now 10 defendants, including former interior minister Nicola Mancino, three former senior paramilitary Carabiniere officers and four mafiosi including Riina, who has been in jail serving multiple life terms since his 1993 capture, are on trial in Palermo facing various charges over the alleged negotiations.
The attacks then abruptly stopped. Prosecutors and Borsellino's brother Salvatore say that was because Italian officials agreed to a deal. An alleged written list of Riina's demands is part of the evidence in the Palermo trial, though he says negotiations were initiated by state officials.
Salvatore Borsellino, now 71, has spent the last 20 years campaigning for the truth about his older brother's death. He says the negotiations with the mafia are the "keystone" of the so-called second republic since 1992.
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