Salvatore Riina led the Corleonesi, the Cosa Nostra faction from the Sicilian town of Corleone, and from the early 1980s was the dominant figure in the Sicilian Mafia. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia in the Maxi Trial in Palermo in December 1987, and after his arrest on January 15, 1993 he was convicted in a long series of further cases, in Palermo, Caltanissetta, Reggio Calabria, Florence and elsewhere. At his death he was serving 26 life sentences for murders committed between 1969 and 1992. He died in Parma on November 17, 2017, aged 87.
In several of the cases the courts based the convictions on his membership of the Commission, Cosa Nostra's governing body, whose members answered for the killings it decided on whoever carried them out. The cases include the killings of two regional politicians, a party leader, judges and prosecutors, and a general of the Carabinieri, and, in 1992, of the magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. He was also convicted over the 1993 attacks in Florence, Rome and Milan. After his arrest he refused to cooperate with the authorities.
Riina was born in Corleone, a hill town in central Sicily, on November 16, 1930, into a poor farming family. As a young man he stole livestock and grain before attaching himself to Luciano Leggio, a local Mafia figure.
At 19, in 1949, he was convicted of a killing committed in a quarrel and sentenced to 12 years. He served part of the sentence and was released in the mid-1950s. By then he belonged to Leggio's circle. In 1958 that group took control of the Corleone clan after the killing of its head, Michele Navarra, and the Corleonesi became a force that the other Palermo families had to reckon with.
He was arrested again in December 1963. In June 1969 a court in Bari acquitted all 64 defendants in a Mafia trial, among them Leggio and Riina. The same year he was ordered to live outside Sicily under a residence order. He did not leave the island. From 1969 he lived as a fugitive, and for the next 24 years the authorities did not see his face.
In December 1969 six people died in Palermo in an attack on the rival boss Michele Cavataio and his associates. Riina was later held responsible. A long time passed before a court reached that conclusion: in 2009, while he was already in custody, a Palermo court gave him and Bernardo Provenzano new life sentences for the 1969 killings, the two being the only surviving members of the group involved.
Leggio was arrested in 1974, and Riina became the head of the Corleone clan. For a time he took Leggio's place in a three-man leadership with Stefano Bontate and Gaetano Badalamenti, and he built links with Palermo politicians, among them the mayor Vito Ciancimino and Salvo Lima. The Commission, on which the heads of the local districts, the mandamenti, sat, was the body that settled disputes between the leading families.
The Corleonesi rose as the Sicilian Mafia moved from construction into the drug trade. The parliamentary anti-Mafia commission later described Riina as the man who imposed his authority within Cosa Nostra by force and then extended it against anyone who opposed him. A series of political killings in Palermo followed. Michele Reina, provincial secretary of the Christian Democrats, died on March 9, 1979. The judge Cesare Terranova was killed the same year. Piersanti Mattarella, president of the Sicilian Region, died on January 6, 1980. Pio La Torre, the regional leader of the Communist Party, died on April 30, 1982, together with Rosario Di Salvo. On September 3, 1982 General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, who had just been appointed prefect of Palermo, died together with his wife.
In May 1981 Riina began the second Mafia war against the faction of Bontate, Salvatore Inzerillo and Badalamenti. More than 200 mafiosi were killed in it by one count, and many others disappeared; the parliamentary commission puts the dead at about a thousand, most of them from Palermo. In 1982 a new Commission was installed, closely controlled by the Corleonesi, with Riina at its head. The old order, in which power had been shared among the districts, was gone. Members of the defeated families later turned state's witness against him.
The case that decided Riina's legal fate rested on the evidence of Tommaso Buscetta, a Cosa Nostra member who broke the code of silence and gave magistrates, among them Falcone and Borsellino, a detailed account of the organization. The trial in Palermo ended in December 1987 after almost two years of hearings. There were 474 defendants and charges that included 120 murders, and membership of a Mafia-type association was tried as an offense in its own right. Of the 474, 360 were convicted, and the sentences added up to 2,665 years. Riina, who was a fugitive, was tried in absentia on murder and drug trafficking charges and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The verdicts were not final. On appeal most of the convictions were overturned, and about 80 percent of those convicted were freed. Falcone and Borsellino took over the appeals, and many of the men were returned to prison. On January 30, 1992 the Court of Cassation confirmed the convictions of the Maxi Trial, including the life sentences. In doing so it endorsed the theory, associated with Buscetta, that the members of Cosa Nostra's governing bodies answer for the crimes decided at that level, not only the men who carry them out.
The parliamentary inquiry into the 1992 and 1993 killings linked what followed to the outcome of the Maxi Trial, which Riina had expected to go badly for the organization.
Salvo Lima was killed in Palermo on March 12, 1992 and Ignazio Salvo on September 17, 1992.
On May 23, 1992 Giovanni Falcone was killed in the attack at Capaci, near Palermo, together with his wife Francesca Morvillo and the police officers Antonio Montinaro, Rocco Di Cillo and Vito Schifani. Fifty-seven days later, on July 19, 1992, Paolo Borsellino was killed in Palermo, in via D'Amelio, with the police officers Emanuela Loi, Agostino Catalano, Vincenzo Li Muli, Claudio Traina and Eddie Walter Cusina.
The prosecution of the two attacks was divided among several trials in Caltanissetta. The Capaci trial produced convictions of 37 senior mafiosi, with Court of Cassation rulings in May 2002 and September 2008. The Via D'Amelio cases, known as Borsellino bis, ter and quater, produced dozens of life sentences, with rulings of the Court of Cassation in January 2003 and September 2008. Riina was convicted in the Capaci proceedings in 1997, and he was serving life for the 1992 killings of both magistrates when he died. The courts found that the provincial and regional Commissions of Cosa Nostra, as the organization's governing bodies, decided on the attacks.
On January 15, 1993 Riina was arrested in Palermo by a special operations unit of the Carabinieri, the ROS, after about 24 years as a fugitive. He had been living in the city for part of that time. Police had not seen his face since 1969. After the arrest he was held under the regime in article 41-bis of the prison law, the most restrictive in the Italian system, which limits a prisoner's contact with the outside world. He remained under it for the 24 years that followed. In 1995 power in the organization passed from Riina to Provenzano.
In 1993, months after Riina's arrest, Cosa Nostra carried out attacks on the Italian mainland. On May 14 an attack in Rome was aimed at Maurizio Costanzo, who survived. On May 27 attacks in Florence killed several people, and on the night of 27 and July 28 attacks followed in Milan and at two churches in Rome. In all, ten people died. The Florence prosecutors investigated the attacks, because the first attack with victims took place there.
The convictions came in several steps. On appeal in Florence, on February 13, 2001, 15 people were given life sentences. On May 6, 2002 the Court of Cassation made the verdicts final: 15 life sentences in all, among them Riina and other Cosa Nostra leaders, and a prison term of 20 years for the cooperating defendant Giovanni Brusca. The charge was murder, with other charges.
After his arrest the courts took up the other killings attributed to the Commission over the years.
On April 12, 1995 the Corte d'Assise in Palermo convicted Riina, with six other members of the Commission, of the murders of Michele Reina, Piersanti Mattarella, and Pio La Torre and Rosario Di Salvo. The operative part of the judgment sentenced each of the seven "alla pena dell'ergastolo, con l'isolamento diurno per la durata di due anni", life imprisonment with two years of daytime isolation. Riina was present at the trial. The Court of Cassation upheld the life sentences for the murders of Reina, La Torre and Di Salvo on July 26, 1999.
In 1997 a court in Reggio Calabria sentenced seven Commission members, Riina among them, to life for the murder of Cesare Terranova in 1979. The court found that the men were members of the Palermo provincial Commission in 1979, as heads of their districts, which made them answerable for the killing, and it relied on the statements of several collaborators of justice that it found consistent with earlier rulings.
Further life sentences followed in Caltanissetta, Agrigento and Palermo for other killings of the 1970s and 1980s.
On June 11, 2004 a court in Palermo sentenced 30 Sicilian mafiosi to life in a trial that had run for ten years and covered 77 murders committed between 1981 and 1991. Riina, already in custody, was among the defendants. Among the victims in that trial was Libero Grassi.
By the time of his death the sentences came to 26 life terms, covering killings between 1969 and 1992. In 2009 the count had stood at about 15.
Not every case ended in a conviction. In 1999 the Court of Cassation upheld his acquittal in the case of the murder of Scopelliti. In the De Mauro case, a Palermo appeals court acquitted him of the murder of Mauro De Mauro, and on June 4, 2015 the Court of Cassation upheld the acquittal "per non avere commesso il fatto", that is, because he did not commit the act.
Held under article 41-bis, Riina never gave the authorities information. At his death he was still considered the head of Cosa Nostra, despite 24 years under that regime. In November 2013 threats against the Palermo prosecutor Nino Di Matteo were attributed to him, and in December 2013 the Interior Minister told the parliamentary anti-Mafia commission that the protection of four magistrates had been raised to the highest level after threats tied to their investigations. In 2017 he was a defendant in a separate case in Milan, for threatening the director of a prison there; a hearing in October 2017 was postponed by a week.
In July 2012 the Palermo prosecutors had asked for Riina and several others to be sent to trial in the State-mafia negotiation case, on a charge under articles 338 and 339 of the penal code, violence or threat against a political organ of the State. Riina remained silent when the prosecution called on him in the proceedings. The first-instance verdict, delivered by the Assize Court in Palermo on April 20, 2018, after his death, convicted former officers of the Carabinieri, a former senator and a Cosa Nostra leader; it pronounced no sentence on Riina, and the case against him was closed.
In 2017 Riina's lawyers applied to the surveillance court in Bologna to defer the execution of his sentence or to let him serve it under a lesser measure of detention. The court refused. On June 5, 2017 the first criminal section of the Court of Cassation, upheld his appeal, annulled the Bologna decision and sent the case back for a new examination. It held that a prisoner's dangerousness did not remove the right to a detention that respects the sense of humanity, and that this applied even to a prisoner held under article 41-bis. It did not order his release or end the 41-bis regime. Relatives of Mafia victims protested the ruling. In July 2017 the Bologna court again refused to defer the sentence or to grant the alternative measure.
Riina died in Parma on November 17, 2017, the day after his 87th birthday. The chief Palermo magistrate, Francesco Lo Voi, said that his death would not mean the end of Cosa Nostra and that it was unclear whether the organization would seek a direct successor or a new structure.
After his death the provincial Commission of Cosa Nostra met again. In December 2018 the Carabinieri carried out an operation against that new Commission, and in May 2024 the Court of Cassation made some of the resulting convictions final and sent others back for a new appeal.
Cosa Nostra is organized by territory. Each district of Palermo and its province is a mandamento, headed by a local boss, and the bosses of the mandamenti sit on the provincial Commission, which settles disputes. Until the 1980s power was divided among the districts; the Corleonesi under Riina ended that arrangement, and the 1982 Commission was closely controlled by them.
The legal theory on which many of Riina's convictions rest was confirmed by the Court of Cassation in January 1992. It holds that the members of the governing bodies answer for crimes decided at that level. A person who orders a crime in this way is called a mandante, the instigator; the person who carries it out is the direct perpetrator. In the Capaci, Via D'Amelio and Terranova cases the courts convicted the members of the Commission on that basis.
Italian criminal cases pass from a first-instance court, the Corte d'Assise for the gravest crimes, to an appeal court, the Corte d'Assise d'Appello, and then to the Court of Cassation, which makes judgments final. Riina, a fugitive in 1987, was tried in absentia. An ergastolo is a life sentence, and in several of his cases it was combined with a period of daytime isolation.
Article 41-bis of the prison law is the strictest regime in the Italian prison system and limits a prisoner's contact with the outside world. Riina was held under it from 1993. Relief from it was among the demands attributed to him after the 1992 killings.
External instigators. Whether anyone outside Cosa Nostra shared in deciding the 1992 and 1993 attacks has not been established. The investigations in Florence and in Caltanissetta into so-called external instigators were archived, in Florence on November 14, 1998 and in Caltanissetta on May 3, 2012. A role for the intelligence services remains an investigative hypothesis only.
The State-mafia negotiation. Prosecutors argued that after the 1992 killings state officials and Cosa Nostra negotiated, and that a list of demands attributed to Riina, which included a review of the Maxi Trial, repeal of the law on cooperating defendants, an end to life imprisonment and an end to the 41-bis regime, was put to them. The 2018 verdict found that state officials had carried the demands of Cosa Nostra to the institutions, and convicted several of them. It did not convict Riina, whose case ended with his death.
The arrest. A parliamentary report has suggested that the arrest may have followed an arrangement involving Provenzano, with the hideout left unexamined and Provenzano's own status as a fugitive protected as possible counterparts. It presents this as one hypothesis, and no court has ruled on it.
The number of killings. Riina is said to have ordered between 100 and 200 killings. These are estimates. The 26 life sentences are the count the courts established, in cases that cover murders from 1969 to 1992.
November 16, 1930: Born in Corleone.
1949: Convicted of a killing in a quarrel; sentenced to 12 years; released in the mid-1950s.
1958: Leggio's group takes control of the Corleone clan.
December 1963: Arrested; acquitted with 63 others at Bari in June 1969.
1969: Ordered to live outside Sicily; goes into hiding; six people die in Palermo in December.
1974: Becomes head of the Corleone clan after Leggio's arrest.
1979 to 1982: Reina, Terranova, Mattarella, La Torre and Di Salvo, and Dalla Chiesa are killed.
May 1981: The second Mafia war begins.
1982: A new Commission is installed under Riina.
December 1987: Maxi Trial verdicts in Palermo; life sentence in absentia.
January 30, 1992: The Court of Cassation confirms the Maxi Trial convictions.
March 12, 1992: Salvo Lima killed.
May 23, 1992: Falcone, Morvillo, Montinaro, Di Cillo and Schifani killed at Capaci.
July 19, 1992: Borsellino, Loi, Catalano, Li Muli, Traina and Cusina killed in Palermo.
January 15, 1993: Arrested in Palermo.
May to July 1993: Attacks in Rome, Florence and Milan; ten people die.
April 12, 1995: Life sentences in Palermo for the Reina, Mattarella and La Torre and Di Salvo murders.
1997: Convicted in the Capaci proceedings; life sentence in Reggio Calabria for the Terranova murder.
1998 to 2001: Life sentences in Caltanissetta, Agrigento and Palermo for other killings.
February 13, 2001: Appeal court in Florence imposes life sentences for the 1993 attacks.
May 6, 2002: The Court of Cassation makes the 1993 convictions final.
June 11, 2004: Palermo court sentences 30 mafiosi to life; Riina among the defendants.
April 2009: New life sentences for the 1969 Palermo killings.
June 4, 2015: Court of Cassation upholds the acquittal in the De Mauro case.
June 5, 2017: Court of Cassation ruling on the Bologna surveillance court's decision.
November 17, 2017: Dies in Parma, aged 87.
April 20, 2018: First-instance verdict in the State-mafia negotiation case.