Piera Aiello

Piera Aiello (; born 2 July 1967) is an Italian police informant and politician known for her stand against the Mafia. She was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. In 2019, she was named as one of the BBC's 100 Women. She did not love her husband and took the pill to avoid giving birth to a child. Her husband found out and raped her. Her husband was killed in 1991 and she and her three-year-old daughter witnessed the killing. She decided to name her husband's killers, a decision supported by her sister-in-law Rita Atria and antimafia magistrate Paolo Borsellino. The judge was later killed in the Via D'Amelio bombing on 19 July 1992, less than two months after his colleague Giovanni Falcone had been killed.

Aiello felt abandoned by her sister and to an enquiry into the politician Vincenzo Culicchia, who had been mayor of Partanna for thirty years.

She married again in 2000 and her husband was aware of her background. She would occasionally give talks about her story for the police to schools, but her face and name were always disguised. Eventually her teenage daughter found paintings she had made in her attic that were signed with her abandoned name. She told her daughter the whole story and decided that she needed to be more active. She decided to take up an offer by the Five Star Movement to run for political office encouraged by her daughter. because of threats from the mafia, she wore a veil to protect her identity.

In 2021, during her mandate as Deputy, she graduated in political sciences at Università degli Studi eCampus with a final dissertation (« tesi di laurea ») in private law.

Studies

She graduated in 2021 in political sciences at the Università degli Studi eCampus