Nordio in the Senate: “The arrest of Matteo Messina Denaro closes the chapter on massacres”

«I have always said that wiretapping is indispensable in terrorism and mafia investigations. Many others are costly and useless and expose citizens, who are neither suspects nor defendants, to the media pillory against art. 15 of the Constitution. But no one has ever questioned, and I’ve said it over and over a thousand times, that wiretapping is an indispensable tool in mafia and terrorism investigations.” These are the words of the Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio on Rai3 before starting the live broadcast. “The arrest of Matteo Messina Denaro is an operation whose merit must be divided between the judiciary and the forces of order, and between this government and the previous ones”. Thus Minister Carlo Nordio in his report on the administration of Justice in the Senate, expressing “the hope that the joy for this great operation will be shared by all political forces”. And he added: “The government’s activity in the fight against the mafia will be strong, homogeneous, lasting and unconditional”.

On the presumption of innocence
«Our firm purpose is to implement the guarantees of criminal law as quickly and effectively as possible. We will implement the protection of the person’s presumption of innocence, ensuring their dignity and honor during the investigation and trial. And in parallel we will ensure the certainty of punishment. A penalty that will not always and only coincide with prison, but which will in any case be afflictive, certain, rapid, proportionate, and oriented towards the recovery of the convict, according to our constitutional provisions”.
«We will reform the Rocco Code»
«We will reform the Rocco Code signed by Benito Mussolini and Vittorio Emanuele Third and it is quite contradictory that a penal code signed by a dictator is still in force just as it is singular that the code of penal procedure signed by Professor Vassalli has instead been demolished by legislative interventions and unfortunately also by the Constitutional Court which made it an enigma within a mystery and it is absolutely inapplicable ».

“It’s not the end of the mafia, but it closes the massacres chapter”
“This will not be the beginning of the end but it will be the end of the beginning, which began many years ago with appalling massacres, of which this arrest is the epilogue because the last of the perpetrators has been brought to justice”.
«No mobster admits crimes on the telephone»
“When I say that mafiosi don’t speak on the phone, I mean the fact that no mafia has expressed a desire to commit a crime on the phone or expressed words that are proof of a crime in progress or in progress. Interceptions are used for the movements of people suspected of organized crime or terrorism and what is needed is to understand the links through the interceptions. This is why preventive measures are essential. Judicial interceptions are another thing and which, due to perverse mechanisms, end up in the newspapers delegitimizing and offending citizens ».