On Friday, a Palermo court found guilty former heads of the ROS security police Mario Mori, Giuseppe De Donno and Antonio Subranni, former Forza Italia Senator and Berlusconi aide Marcello Dell’Utri, and Mafia bosses Leoluca Bagarella and Nino Cinà for holding talks between the Italian State and the Sicilian Mafia aimed at stopping a wave of bombings in the early 1990s. The Parlermo court also found guilty go-between Massimo Ciancimino, son of late Mafia-convicted Palermo mayor Vito Ciancimino. The guilty parties were sentenced to prison terms ranging from eight to 28 years. Former interior minister Nicola Mancino was cleared of perjury.
The court case showed that Marcello Dell’Utri acted as a transmission belt between the requests of Cosa Nostra and the then Berlusconi government which had shortly before been installed,” he said. “What emerged is that elements of the state acted as a go-between for mafia demands while judges and citizens were blown to bits,” lead prosecutor Nino Di Matteo told daily Corriere Della Sera on Saturday, claiming that a link had been established between the Mafia “and Berlusconi the politician.”
This result will create further problems in the process which should see the formation of an Italian government. Di Maio, asked supporters late on Friday: “How could I come here if I had made an agreement with Silvio Berlusconi?” “How could I say that we’re not like those who came before us?” he added at a campaign event in Campobasso, ahead of an election Sunday in the tiny southern region of Molise where his anti-establishment movement faces off against right-wing forces. 
