American mobsters ordered murder of Italian prosecutor, says Mafia turncoat

A mafia supergrass has given the first authoritative account of relations between the Cosa Nostra, in which he was formerly number two, and its cousins in America – as seen from Sicily.

Antonino Giuffre, who was the right-hand man to the fugitive chief of the Cosa Nostra Bernardo Provenzano until he turned state's evidence last year, said the American branch ordered the murder of Giovanni Falcone, the anti-Mafia prosecutor killed by a huge bomb in 1992 after rounding up and putting on trial hundreds of Sicilian gangsters.

He also claimed that American mobsters in need of moral improvement were routinely sent to a sort of Mafia finishing school in western Sicily.

In verbal testimony to the FBI, made public in Palermo on Monday, Mr Giuffre said Mr Falcone had flown to the United States and, with the American prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani, later Mayor of New York, "had delivered a hard blow to the international Mafia". He said: "By the rules of Cosa Nostra, if a Sicilian prosecutor goes to America and damages the Italian American Mafia ... the Mafia boss of the region [the prosecutor] came from must intervene."

Mr Giuffre said his former boss Toto Riina had explained this rule to him. Riina was arrested in 1993 and convicted of masterminding the murders of Mr Falcone and, two months later, his colleague Paolo Borsellino. He is still in jail.

"Toto Riina told me that he bore responsibility towards the Americans and for that reason sought to neutralise the attacks on the [Mafia] boss in the United States," Mr Giuffre said. "The American Mafia were determined to have revenge for these attacks on them by the prosecutor, without any scruple of conscience.

"I think the American economy, or part of it, is hand in glove with the Mafia ... If the bosses suffer attacks, the Mafia does everything it can to make [those who have attacked them] pay, and to recover what they have lost."

The murders of the two prosecutors, who had done much to cripple the Sicilian Mafia, made headlines around the world. Despite the conviction of Riina, there is a nagging sense that the authorities have yet to get to the bottom of the Falcone-Borsellino murders – and some doubt whether they have the will to do so.

Last year, a Sicilian judge dismissed the allegation made by other Mafia supergrasses that Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's Prime Minister, and Marcello Dell'Utri, his long-time Sicilian crony, were implicated in the murders. It took him 14 months to make up his mind. Even then, he ordered an investigation into links between Mr Berlusconi's company Fininvest and the Cosa Nostra to be reopened.

Mr Giuffre also put flesh on allegations that Italian American mobsters had been paying regular visits to Sicily to learn the dos and don'ts of the Cosa Nostra. A report by the FBI has claimed that members of the Bonanno clan, one of the five Mafia "families" of New York, were sent to Castellammare in the far west of Sicily for toughening up. The clan was led by Joe Bananas, who died in his bed in Tucson, Arizona, last May, aged 97.

Confirming the report, Mr Giuffre said: "[Castellammare] is the right choice. That's where you find the hard base of the Mafia, attached to courage and respect, and the kids who come there from the US learn that even their bosses talk too much ... It's a good laboratory of preparation."