Pio La Torre

Pio La Torre (; 24 December 1927 – 30 April 1982) was a leader of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI). He was killed by the Mafia after he initiated a law that introduced a new crime in the Italian legal system, mafia conspiracy, and extended the power of the courts to seize and confiscate assets of people belonging to a Mafia-type association.

Peasant leader La Torre was born in Altarello di Baida, a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Palermo. He grew up with five siblings in a poor peasant family, with no water or electricity at home. His political commitment began with his enrolment in the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1945 and the establishment of a party section in his township, the first of many that he also helped to open in neighbouring townships. His political activities started as a leader of the peasant movement on Sicily, first in the Confederterra, later on as the regional secretary of the Italian General Confederation of Labour (Cgil).

In 1948, he had to leave his family home, ever since his father, worried by the threats of the Mafia, who had come to threaten him by burning down the stable doors, had invited Pio La Torre to choose between continuing his battle by leaving or staying with his family. At the time, on the eve of the 1948 Italian general election, several peasant leaders had been killed, including Placido Rizzotto in Corleone (who was killed by the Mafia of Luciano Leggio), Calogero Cangelosi in Camporeale and in Petralia. While in jail, his wife , a daughter of a Palermo doctor who he had married in 1949, gave birth to his first-born son. According to the minority report: … it would be a grave error on the part of the Commission to accept the theory that the Mafia-political link has been eliminated. Even today the behaviour of the ruling DC group in the running of the City and the Provincial Councils offers the most favourable terrain for the perpetuation of the system of Mafia power.

After a series of Mafia killings in 1979–80, which included state officials that actively opposed Cosa Nostra such as police inspector Boris Giuliano, judge Terranova, and DC politician Piersanti Mattarella, La Torre initiated a bill on 31 March 1980 that introduced a new crime in the Italian legal system, mafia conspiracy, and extended the power for the courts to seize and confiscate assets of persons involved in the mafia conspiracy.

With the inclusion of a Mafia-type association in Article 416 bis of the Italian Penal Code, a serious legal gap in fighting mafia-type organized crime was filled. Despite the clear and known danger, mafia conspiracy had not been recognised as a criminal phenomenon in the Penal Code. As a result, many judges did not consider the Mafia as a criminal association. Until then, the provisions of Article 416 of the Penal Code on mafia-like associations were suitable only for local and limited phenomena of associated crime and delinquency, but not for organised crime of mafia proportions.

Return to Sicily In 1981, La Torre requested of the party that he be sent back to Sicily where he became the regional secretary of the PCI. He also became part of the popular movement against the deployment of Ground Launched Cruise Missiles (GLCM) by the United States at Comiso Air Base, just like the journalist Giuseppe Fava. The missiles were stationed in June 1983 but were dismantled after the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) was signed by the former Soviet Union and the United States on 8 December 1987. The last 16 GLCMs left the Comiso Air Base in 1991.

Assassination by the Mafia

Before his new anti-Mafia law was approved in Parliament, La Torre was killed by the Corleonesi, which were engaged in a fierce internal war against rival Mafia factions (the so-called Second Mafia War) and against those representatives of the state that tried to seriously fight Cosa Nostra.

On 30 April 1982, La Torre and his driver Rosario Di Salvo were shot in a hail of bullets near the Communist Party's headquarters in Palermo. Their car was trapped in a one-way street blocked by the killers' car. Di Salvo shot back with his .38-caliber pistol before he was killed. The hit team was composed of Pino Greco, Giuseppe Lucchese, Nino Madonia, Mario Prestifilippo and Salvatore Cucuzza.

The day after General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa was appointed as prefect for Palermo to stop the violence of the Second Mafia War. La Torre's law was approved only after Dalla Chiesa was also murdered on 3 September 1982, on the orders of Mafia boss Salvatore Riina of the Corleonesi. That compelled Parliament to adopt the law La Torre initiated in a rush together with other emergency measures against the Mafia.

Murder investigation and convictions La Torre was "sentenced" to death by the Sicilian Mafia Commission because of his political endeavour against the Mafia. On 12 April 1995, Michele Greco, Totò Riina, Bernardo Brusca, Bernardo Provenzano, Pippo Calò, Francesco Madonia and Nenè Geraci, all members of the Commission, were sentenced to life imprisonment for ordering the murder. The remaining material killers, Antonino Madonia and Giuseppe Lucchese (the others had been killed in the Second Mafia War), were sentenced to life in 2004.

According to the newly introduced article 416 bis: "The organization is of the mafia-type when its components use intimidation, subjection and, consequentially, silence (omertà), to commit crimes, directly or indirectly acquire the management or the control of businesses, concessions, authorizations, public contracts and public services to obtain either unjust profits or advantages for themselves or others."

The Rognoni-La Torre Law was instrumental in the fight against the Mafia, and provided the tools used by Antimafia judge Rocco Chinnici, and the Antimafia Pool headed by Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, to prosecute the Sicilian Mafia in the Maxi Trial that started in 1986 and led to the conviction in December 1987 of the 475 defendants, including the Mafia's top echelon of the Commission. Like La Torre, the judges did not survive the revenge of the Mafia.

Legacy Journalist Alexander Stille summarized La Torre’s significant but tragic legacy as the person that "achieved only in death what he had fought for in life: for the first time in history, the parliament made it a crime to belong to the Mafia and gave prosecutors the power to seize Mafia assets accumulated through criminal activity." The Comiso Airport was dedicated to Pio La Torre.