Italy’s Mafia Chief Placed in Maximum Security in Rome

ROME â€”  The Mafia’s boss of bosses, a long-sought fugitive named in dozens of murder warrants, made his first public appearance in more than two decades Saturday, but it was a reluctant and hurried debut.

Salvatore (Toto) Riina, 62, wore manacles and a gray suit jacket tossed over his head as he was hustled from jail in Sicily into a military helicopter that swept him to Rome amid an intimidating show of police protection.

As police in Sicily began arresting accomplices who helped Riina survive an astonishing 23 years in hiding, an elaborate security envelope surrounded the squat, taciturn Mafia boss--Italy’s most wanted man and one of the world’s most dangerous criminals.

“This man must live, survive. He must talk and tell everything,� said Interior Minister Nicola Mancino after Riina’s arrest Friday in Palermo, the Sicilian capital, in what officials called one of the most spectacular blows ever delivered against the Mafia.

Police took Riina to maximum security Rebibbia prison on the eastern outskirts of Rome, their caution underlining fears that the Mafia might try to kill him to stop any chance he might talk.

“He has to be watched every minute around the clock, night and day. We’ll check what he drinks, his food, and even control the air he breathes,� said Mancino. Key Mafia figures have often died in jail, at least two of them from poisoned espresso.

Riina, who ruled the Mafia as a dictator for a dozen years, has a court date here Monday. For openers, anti-Mafia judges want to interrogate him about the murder of Salvo Lima, a prominent Christian Democratic politician in Sicily.

Riina, who is already under sentence of life for murders, is accused of ordering last spring’s assassination of Lima, whom renegades from the Mafia have termed a key link between organized crime and political power in Italy.

If Riina explains the Mafia’s ties to the political Establishment, his testimony would be explosive.

Under Riina, the Mafia became a one-dictator show, specialists on the organization say, with the affable, soft-spoken and sanguinary capo di tutti i capi ignoring long-established councils and codes of honor to impose almost feudal rule by force.

When police distributed Riina’s picture following his arrest, it was the first time since 1969 that anybody beyond his closest Mafia associates knew what he looked like.

A native of the interior Sicilian town of Corleone, Riina stood just over five feet and weighed in at around 175 pounds at his booking. He spoke a broken Italian nearly drowned by Sicilian dialect. Riina, who has a fourth-grade education and is accused of committing his first murder in 1958, signed his name with difficulty, police said.

In Palermo, Riina was processed in a room in which hung pictures of former Mafia hunter Gen. Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa and anti-Mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. He is accused of ordering the murder of all three.

It may never be known if Riina lived all his fugitive years near Palermo, but police said Saturday that he was married in a Palermo church and had four children born at the same hospital in the city.

There was no sign Saturday of Riina’s children, who have never been seen by police, or of his wife, Antonietta Bagarella, who has been on the run with him since 1970, before their first child was born.

Riina’s bloody rule of the Mafia helped turn disaffected Mafiosi into informers, but both police and judicial officials Saturday said his arrest did not result from information provided by collaborators.

When he was arrested, Riina was sharing an apartment with a 40-year-old unemployed agricultural worker who was driving the car as police moved in to climax what they called Operazione Belva--Operation Wild Beast.