Nicola Mancino

Nicola Mancino (born 15 October 1931) is an Italian politician who served as president of the Senate of the Republic from 1996 to 2001. He was also president of Campania's regional parliament from 1965 to 1971, president of Campania from 1971 to 1972, and Minister of the Interior from 1992 to 1994.

Early life Mancino was born in Montefalcione, province of Avellino, in the Campania region. He became first provincial and then regional secretary of Christian Democracy (DC), being elected for the first time in the Senate of the Republic in 1976. He had was reconfirmed in all subsequent elections until 2006.

Minister of the Interior Mancini was Minister of the Interior from 1992 to 1994. On 1 July 1992, magistrate Paolo Borsellino had a meeting with Mancino, who at the time had just been named as Minister; Borsellino would be killed just over two weeks later in the Via D'Amelio bombing on 19 July. Mancino always denied that he had met Borsellino. In a television interview of 24 July 2009, judge Giuseppe Ayala said that "Mancino himself told me that he had met Borsellino on 1 July 1992. More: Mancino showed me his meeting agenda with the name of Borsellino on it." Vittorio Aliquò, the other magistrate who was interviewing Mutolo at the time of ministry's phone call, later declared that he had accompanied Borsellino "up to the threshold of the minister's office". In 2007, a letter from Borsellino's brother, Salvatore, was published. Titled "19 July 1992: A State Massacre" (19 luglio 1992: Una strage di stato), the letter supports the hypothesis that Mancino knew the causes of the magistrate's assassination. Borsellino's brother wrote:

A law enacted and signed by Mancino in 1993 during his tenure as Interior Minister permits the prosecution of those involved in racial, ethnic and religious discrimination and the incitement of hate crime. This law is commonly called the "Mancino law".

Later career In 1994, after the dissolution of the DC, Mancino adhered to the Italian People's Party (PPI), collaborating with its secretary, Mino Martinazzoli. In July of the same year, he opposed the alliance with the centre-right coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi, and also opposed the election of Rocco Buttiglione as PPI secretary. He later became a member of The Daisy (La Margherita), a coalition of parties born out of the left wing of the PPI. After the victory of the centre-left coalition led by Romano Prodi in the 1996 Italian general election, Mancino was elected president of the Senate of the Republic, and served from 9 May 1996 until 29 May 2001.

On 24 July 2006, Mancino left the Senate and became deputy-president of the High Council of the Judiciary (Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura) Italy's senior council of justice. In July 2012, prosecutors in Palermo ordered Mancino to stand trial for withholding evidence about the alleged State-Mafia Pact, which would have involved talks between the Italian state and the Sicilian Mafia during the latter's bombing campaign in 1992 that assassinated, among others, the judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. On 20 April 2018, he was acquitted.

Electoral history