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Gangland confidential: A made-in-Canada killing in the birthplace of the Mafia

Why, Pete? Why?”

Sprawled across the front seat of a rental car in a ramshackle construction yard in Sicily and bleeding from a dozen bullet wounds, Juan Ramon Fernandez did not beg for his life or cry or shout or pray. A perfect gangster knows when and how he is going to die. He spent his final breath only voicing surprise at who was standing over him.

“Why, Pete? Why?”

The retort from the gunman at the open car door, nursing an injury of his own from the frantic ambush, was to lift his pistol once more, aim at Fernandez’s head and fire a finishing round.

Fernandez did not learn the answer to his question that spring night in 2013 but a court in Palermo is now filling in the blanks.

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PALERMO, SICILY — There are things on the walls of Leonardo Agueci’s fortified office that trigger giddy exuberance and there are things that turn his expressive face grave and dour.

Among the clutter of mismatched frames, in the corner, is memorabilia of Inter Milan, one of Italy’s great soccer teams. Talk of Inter and his speech quickens, delivering a homily on recent struggles of a team with a glorious past.

Above his desk, however, is a wood-framed photograph of two former colleagues who were murdered for doing the same work Mr. Agueci does as the head of anti-Mafia prosecutions in Palermo, Sicily, the birthplace of the Mafia. Mention the photo of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, both blown to bits in 1992, and Mr. Agueci’s smile withers.

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The very placement of the photo, hovering over him as he works and staring out at visitors, suggests he knows its power: a symbolic reminder that he holds one of the most daunting and dangerous jobs in the Western world.

If anyone forgot, last month brought a shock prompt: revelations from a senior Cosa Nostra informant that the Mafia is plotting a bomb attack using a shoulder-held rocket-launcher to assassinate a prosecutor working under Mr. Agueci.

For the Sicilian-born magistrate, the new threat harkens to the bad old days when vacancies in his office rarely came through retirement.

For a time, it was Mr. Falcone himself who toiled in this room, gathering evidence, approving investigations and directing prosecutions against accomplished traffickers, extortionists, killers and corruptors.

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“For all of the magistrates, Falcone and Borsellino are important points of reference — not only because they died doing their job, but also for what they did during their lives as magistrates,” Mr. Agueci says through a translator.

Mr. Agueci is the deputy director of Mafia prosecutors for the criminal court in Palermo, the number-two job title in a hierarchy that doesn’t currently have a number one. In Mafia parlance, he’s the underboss of a family that has no boss.

Mr. Agueci’s office inside Palermo’s Il Palazzo di Giustizia, literally “the palace of justice,” requires passage through an airport-style security checkpoint. Outside his office a small corps of bodyguards lounges, perking up at the rare approach of a stranger.

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Although it looks almost normal, his office door is inordinately heavy, clearly reinforced in some way, and a buzzer allows Mr. Agueci himself to decide when to unlock it.

Inside, he seems at ease, reclining deep into a chair. His face is invitingly open and what little hair remains is white. He quizzes a reporter — amiably but probingly — before opening himself up to scrutiny.

For those outside Italy, Mr. Agueci’s situation can be difficult to grasp.

Magistrates Falcone and Borsellino are only the best-known officials murdered in the struggle by Sicilian mobsters to control the state. From the 1960s through the 1990s, a distressing succession of troublesome magistrates, investigators, politicians and journalists were murdered at the whim of the Mafia.

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It was an overt assault against the state and, for a time, the state teetered on the brink.

With alarming regularity, when a prosecutor in Palermo took too much interest in the criminal affairs of a Mafia clan he was killed; then, if his successor did not quickly retreat, he too was killed in a bloody, frightening cycle.

It was in this milieu that Mr. Falcone entered the line of fire. He modernized financial investigations and used maxi-trials — putting dozens of mobsters on trial at once — to great effect. Too great an effect.

Salvatore “Totò” Riina, a Mafia boss also nicknamed “The Beast” because of his reliance on outrageous violence, ordered Mr. Falcone’s death, demanding it be done in Sicily as a message to others to never challenge him.

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When Mr. Falcone arrived back in Palermo from Rome on May 23, 1992, the Mafia detonated a half-ton of explosives under the highway from the airport; the blast killed Mr. Falcone, his wife and three police guards.

The spot of the assassination is now marked by twin granite columns, one on each side of the highway, inscribed with the names of those killed. Citizens routinely add flowers and messages of adoration.

As if to prove its endless appetite for death, just 57 days later the Mafia detonated another bomb in Palermo, killing Mr. Falcone’s friend and closest colleague, Mr. Borsellino.

At the time of the bombings, Mr. Agueci was already a veteran prosecutor working in Rome. He knew Mr. Falcone personally and his death rattled him, but the assassinations did not cause him to run.

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“The exact opposite,” he says. “Before 1992, the time of the murders, I was working out of town and right after they were killed I came here to work.”

Along with prompting his return to Palermo, he said Mr. Falcone and Mr. Borsellino continue to be an inspiration to young prosecutors: “They give strength to all magistrates.”

The public backlash started pushing the Mafia into the shadows.

“When you talk about the Mafia, there is no regret or admission of mistakes but more a change in strategy,” says Mr. Agueci. “It was a time when the Mafia thought they could win the war against the state in a violent way, showing power and strength.

“After 1992 they decided to change strategy — a more quiet type of strategy to attack the power through subterfuge; to become part of every structure, from politics to normal society. It is a softer, quieter way… more like the old classic Mafia style.

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“When I was growing up here, in a Sicilian family, my parents used to say the Mafia isn’t dangerous because they are just killing each other. That was a tragic mistake,” he says.

“That doesn’t mean it is less dangerous, just different,” he says.

The new plot that is bringing increased security to the magistrates working in Mr. Agueci’s office has its root in the aftermath of the 1992 assassinations.

A particularly sensitive trial is now underway in Palermo against former state officials accused of secretly negotiating with the Mafia after the bombings. Prosecuted by magistrate Nino Di Matteo, even Italy’s president, Giorgio Napolitano, was called to testify. It is making mobsters and politicians uneasy and sparked the plot against Mr. Di Matteo.

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The renewed call to arms against magistrates allegedly came from “The Beast” himself, issued from his prison cell where he is serving a life sentence.

From Italy’s predicament, Mr. Agueci sends a warning to Canada, where the Mafia has long been active but generally keeping to the quiet strategy of subterfuge and corruption.

In Canada, the taste for war against organized crime ebbs and flows according to how grievously mob violence strays outside the shadows.

“It is a politician’s strategy,” says Mr. Agueci. “But from our experience, this type of strategy is a big mistake and will bring a lot of trouble in the future,” he says, diplomatically adding, “But of course, we can’t judge your national strategy.”

He encounters more references to Canada in his work these days, including a current trial involving two gangsters from Toronto murdered in an ambush outside Palermo allegedly by Sicilian mobsters linked to the Mafia in Montreal.

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“Traditionally, sometimes mafiosi here have had a closer relationship with Chicago or New York than they had to Rome or other cities in Italy. Now we find this is also the case with Canada,” he says.

“Canada is for sure an important place for them to improve their business. In Canada, I think they see a land of opportunity for business and for recycling money.”

Mr. Agueci calls for greater international cooperation in combatting organized crime.

“The Mafia is a worldwide organization and since the Mafia now is worldwide it is very important the structure of police also be worldwide and to cooperate. That, for sure, is happening at the police level but is not working as well at the judicial level,” he says.

For instance, in Canada it is not a crime to be a member of the Mafia as it is in Italy, meaning mafiosi fleeing the charge in Italy who settle in Canada cannot be extradited.

“We can see the Mafia association — it is a real relationship between these people that divides them from the rest of society,” he says, defending Italy’s law. “From all I know about the reality of the Mafia in Canada, you have the knowledge and instruments to see that the Mafia is real in Canada too,” he says.

But his focus remains on the mobsters of Palermo.

There are more than enough of them here and they pose far too grave a danger to stray.

National Post

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