Bernardo Provenzano was born in Corleone in 1933 and led Cosa Nostra from January 1993, when Salvatore Riina was arrested in Palermo, until his own arrest in April 2006. By then he had been a fugitive for 43 years. Courts in Palermo, Agrigento and the Court of Cassation sentenced him to life imprisonment in a series of cases, a large part of them in his absence, for murders and for ordering killings that included those of Giovanni Falcone, Paolo Borsellino and Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa. In April 2014 a count of his sentences gave 20 life sentences, with 33 years and six months of daytime isolation, 49 years and one month of imprisonment and a fine of 13,000 euros.
After the arrest he was tried in person for the first time, in Palermo, and two further life sentences were added in 2009 and 2010. Later proceedings against him were suspended on findings that he could not take part in them. He remained under the 41-bis regime, the strictest form of detention in Italy, and he died in Milan on July 13, 2016, aged 83.
Provenzano was born in 1933 in Corleone, a hill town in the province of Palermo. In the 1970s he stood beside Riina in the Corleonesi, the Corleone-based group that came to dominate Cosa Nostra, and he is described as Riina's right-hand man. A first indictment for murder dated from 1963. Police wanted him from that year, and he went into hiding, a life underground that lasted until April 2006.
Few photographs of him existed, and the investigators who hunted him worked from old pictures. He avoided telephones. Instructions passed through handwritten and typed notes carried by messengers, which became known as pizzini. A reward of the equivalent of 2.2 million dollars was offered for his capture.
Riina was arrested in Palermo in January 1993, and Provenzano became the head of the organization. He was known as the "boss of bosses" until his arrest in 2006.
In January 2006 police arrested 46 people in Sicily in an operation aimed at the network that supported him. In April 2003 police had arrested a man in Palermo who resembled him, and he turned out not to be Provenzano.
In 1986 and 1987 Palermo held the Maxi Trial, a prosecution of several hundred members of Cosa Nostra. Provenzano was among those convicted in absentia.
On December 10, 1969 six people died in Palermo in an operation directed at the man Michele Cavataio. Francesco Tumminello, Salvatore Bevilacqua and Giovanni Domè were among the dead. Relatives of Domè later joined the case as a civil party. The investigation was reopened decades afterward on the statements of two cooperating witnesses.
On April 28, 2009, about 40 years after the events, the Palermo Court of Assize sentenced Provenzano and Salvatore Riina to life imprisonment. They were the only surviving members of the group. Provenzano, then 76, was already detained when the verdict was delivered.
In September 1981 three men were killed in San Giovanni Gemini, in the interior of the Agrigento province: Gigino Pizzuto, Michele Ciminnisi and Vincenzo Romano. In December 2010 the Court of Assizes of Agrigento sentenced Riina and Provenzano to life imprisonment as the instigators of the killings. A third defendant, Pippo Calò, was acquitted.
Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa was killed in Palermo in 1982. Provenzano was convicted of giving the order for the killing.
Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were killed in Sicily within five months of each other in 1992. Provenzano was convicted in absentia of belonging to the Mafia leadership that ordered the killings, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. When his trial began in Palermo in May 2006, he had already been sentenced in absentia to life for the 1992 killings, and that sentence was not part of the new case.
Between May 1993 and 1994 a series of attacks took place in Florence, Milan and Rome. Ten people died and 95 were injured. The Florence prosecutors charged the series as an offense aggravated by terrorist purposes and the subversion of the democratic order. On May 6, 2002 the Court of Cassation made fifteen life sentences final. The defendants sentenced to life included Riina, Leoluca Bagarella, Filippo and Giuseppe Graviano, Matteo Messina Denaro and Provenzano. Giovanni Brusca, who had cooperated with prosecutors, received 20 years. At his death he was described as one of the masterminds of the 1993 attacks in Rome, Milan and Florence.
On June 12, 2004 a court in Palermo delivered verdicts at the end of a trial that had lasted ten years and covered 77 murders committed between 1981 and 1991. Thirty defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment. They included Provenzano, who was still at large, and Riina. Four others received sentences of 10 to 13 years and 12 people were found not guilty.
Provenzano was arrested on April 11, 2006, a Tuesday, in the countryside near Corleone, in the province of Palermo. He was 73. The Interior Ministry announced the arrest, and he was taken to Palermo that day. Piero Grasso, then Italy's national anti-Mafia prosecutor, confirmed his identity. He offered no resistance. The arrest came after 43 years in which he had avoided capture.
On May 2, 2006, three weeks after the arrest, Provenzano appeared by video link before a Palermo court from a prison in central Italy. He was tried with other defendants, among them Riina. The case concerned dozens of murders and more than a decade of crimes, including the 1991 murder of Libero Grassi near Palermo. At his request the judge barred the media from rebroadcasting images of him from the hearing.
A further trial in Palermo concerned extortion against a firm in Agrigento. On November 10, 2014 the court found him unfit to stand trial and adjourned the case to June 2015 for a new assessment.
The third set of proceedings was the State-Mafia case. A Palermo judge found sufficient evidence on March 6, 2013 and the trial was set to start on May 27, 2013. Five bosses were named as defendants: Riina, Leoluca Bagarella, Giovanni Brusca, Antonino Cina and Provenzano. The charge against him was violence or threat against a state institution. Prosecutors said the demands on the government had been pressed through murders and other violent acts. On October 9, 2013 the preliminary hearing judge, Piergiorgio Morosini, again held that Provenzano could not consciously take part in the trial, on the basis of a new expert report. The hearing was adjourned to January 29 for a new assessment. He died before any verdict was reached in his own position.
After the arrest Provenzano was detained in a series of institutions, in Palermo first, then in Terni, Novara and Parma. The 41-bis regime, which severely restricts contact with other inmates and with the outside world, was applied to him and was renewed at intervals. In April 2014 the Justice Minister, Andrea Orlando, extended it. The prosecutors' offices of Palermo, Caltanissetta and Florence had given a negative opinion on the extension, while the national anti-Mafia directorate approved it, taking the view that Provenzano could still give orders to Cosa Nostra.
On April 4, 2014 the first criminal chamber of the Court of Cassation rejected the appeal of his lawyers, Rosalba Di Gregorio and Francesco Marasa, against a decision of the Bologna Surveillance Court of August 27. That decision had refused to defer his sentence. The appeal was dismissed and the lawyers were ordered to pay costs.
In January 2015 the Surveillance Court of Rome rejected an appeal against the 41-bis regime. It accepted the findings of several expert reports but held that they did not exclude with certainty that he could issue criminal directions through family members, and it pointed to his past use of handwritten notes while a fugitive.
Provenzano died on July 13, 2016 in Milan, aged 83. His lawyer announced the death. In the years before, he had been held under tight security in Milan.
On October 25, 2018, two years after his death, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on a complaint filed in his name. It found that Italy had violated Article 3 of the European Convention, which bars inhuman or degrading treatment, when it renewed the 41-bis regime on March 23, 2016 and kept it in force until his death. It also held that keeping him in detention, as such, did not violate the Convention. The court rejected the claims for 150,000 euros in moral damages and 20,000 euros in costs. Italian ministers criticized the ruling, and the Justice Minister said that Article 41-bis was not under discussion.
Several of the verdicts against Provenzano were delivered in his absence while he was a fugitive. The Maxi Trial of 1986 to 1987 and the life sentence for the 1992 killings fall into that group. Sentences become final when the Court of Cassation confirms them, as it did for the 1993 to 1994 attacks on May 6, 2002.
The 41-bis regime is a provision of the prison law for people held for mafia offenses. It severely restricts contact with other inmates and outsiders. It is renewed by decision of the Justice Minister after opinions from prosecutors' offices, and the surveillance courts and the Court of Cassation review requests to lift it or to defer a sentence. In Provenzano's case that review ended in 2018 with a European finding that the renewal from March 2016 was a violation of Article 3, while his detention itself was not found to violate the Convention.
The State-Mafia proceeding against Provenzano never reached a verdict. Eight defendants in the case were convicted by a court in Palermo in April 2018, and Provenzano had died before the verdicts.
A related case concerned the failure to arrest him in the 1990s. Mario Mori and Mauro Obinu were tried for aggravated aiding of the Mafia in relation to alleged help given to Provenzano. They were acquitted on appeal under the formula that the facts did not constitute an offense, and on June 8, 2017 the Court of Cassation rejected the Palermo prosecutor general's appeal, making the acquittal final.
1933: Born in Corleone.
1963: First indictment for murder; goes into hiding.
September 1981: Three men killed in San Giovanni Gemini; he is sentenced to life as instigator in December 2010.
1982: Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa killed in Palermo.
1986 to 1987: Convicted in absentia in the Maxi Trial.
1992: Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino killed; he is sentenced in absentia to life.
January 1993: Riina arrested; he takes over the leadership.
1993 to 1994: Series of attacks in Florence, Milan and Rome.
May 6, 2002: Court of Cassation makes fifteen life sentences final, his among them.
June 12, 2004: Palermo court sentences 30 defendants, including him, to life.
January 2006: Police arrest 46 people in Sicily.
April 11, 2006: Arrested near Corleone, in the province of Palermo.
May 2, 2006: Appears by video link at the opening of a Palermo trial.
April 28, 2009: Palermo Court of Assize sentences him and Riina to life for the December 1969 killings.
December 2010: Agrigento Court of Assizes sentences him and Riina to life.
2013: State-Mafia proceeding opens; he is held unable to take part.
April 4, 2014: Court of Cassation rejects his lawyers' appeal.
November 10, 2014: Palermo court finds him unfit to stand trial in the extortion case.
January 2015: Rome Surveillance Court rejects an appeal against the 41-bis regime.
July 13, 2016: Dies in Milan.
June 8, 2017: Cassation makes final the acquittal of Mori and Obinu.
October 25, 2018: European Court of Human Rights rules on the renewal of the 41-bis regime.