Alleged mobsters go on trial

Press, 12 February 1986, Page 11

Alleged mobsters go on trial

NZPA-AP Palermo, Sicily The biggest Mafia trial in Italian history has opened today. The defendants are held in steel cages and the police escort the judges who will hear charges against the 474 accused mobsters. The Government hopes the trial, where charges include drug smuggling and multiple murder, will mark the turning point in its long fight against the mob.

Authorities said 115 of the defendants were at large, including most of the top-ranking bosses indicted after a three-year investigation by five of Italy’s top investigating magistrates.

The courtroom was built for the trial at a cost of SUSI 7 million ($31.8 million). The defendants are held in 30 steelbarred cages guarded by armed police. About 100 defendants were present for the trial’s opening, and the police have reported dozens of anonymous calls threatening attacks on them.

A reputed leader of the Corleone faction, Luciano Liggio, sat alone in cage 23, dressed in a blue tracksuit and white sneakers, smoking a cigar. In the adjoining cage was Pippo Calo, called the grand cashier of the Mafia, who allegedly recycled mob money until his arrest in Rome last

Most occupants of the cages wore neat, dark suits.

To accommodate the security force of 2000 men the Government rented three vacant 15storey apartment buildings in a residential section of Palermo. One minute of silence was observed in schools, offices and factories throughout Sicily when the trial began at 10 a.m. Many schools in Palermo devoted their first classes to a discussion of the Mafia, which has been a pervasive influence in Sicily for centuries. Prosecutors say they have some of the bestdocumented evidence

ever gathered against the mob, which will mean less reliance than in past trials on testimony from mob members turned informants.

Much of the evidence was gathered with the aid of a recently passed law giving authorities wider powers. It accords them extensive wire-tapping privileges and access to bank records as a means of tracking down laun-' dered profits from the multibillion-dollar heroin business centred on Sicily, a large island off southern Italy.

Among the charges against the defendants are 90 murders and criminal association involving control of the drug traffic.