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CRIME

Mafia turncoat’s true story gets star turn at Cannes

A film telling the incredible story of the Sicilian mafia's most famous informer has wowed Cannes, but its Italian director lamented that such astonishing courage has failed to deal the mob a fatal blow.

Mafia turncoat's true story gets star turn at Cannes
Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino, film director Marco Bellocchio and Brazilian actress Maria Fernanda Candido at a photocall for the film "The Traitor (Il Traditore)" at the 72nd edition of the Cann

“The Traitor”, which drew stars including Leonardo DiCaprio and Orlando Bloom to its red carpet premiere, tells a tale of death-defying resistance against some of the world's most powerful crime bosses.

Tommaso Buscetta was the first major Sicilian mafia boss to break the traditional “omerta” code of silence and to turn state's evidence.

Despite the mafia murdering 20 of his relatives, including his wife, brother and two of his sons, Buscetta continued to give evidence against his former comrades.

The film by veteran director Marco Bellocchio charts the charismatic Buscetta's path to redemption, and paints him as a pivotal if deeply flawed historic figure.

READ ALSO: Actor from mafia film Piranhas stabbed in Naples

“He's not a hero of course, he's just a very courageous person. He wants to save himself and the life of his family at the same time,” Bellocchio said.

“He's full of nostalgia for a type of mafia he grew up in and that christened him in a sense. He's not a revolutionary… of the type that wants to change the world, like Fidel Castro or Che Guevara.”

Bellocchio said he sought to avoid the Hollywood cliches of the mob in bringing the Cosa Nostra to life.

“We've all seen the Godfather movies and the risk we took was to try and do something different, he said.

“We wanted to follow our own path and didn't want to be afraid of doing or not doing what had already been done.”

'A little bit afraid'

Buscetta's damaging testimony led to the conviction in 1986 of 475 mafiosi and gave US and Italian law enforcement officials invaluable insight into the running of the Cosa Nostra.

It also resulted in devastating mafia revenge attacks on his family.

And it forced Buscetta to undergo several plastic surgery operations to change his appearance and to move to the United States in 1985 under FBI protection.

Actor Pierfrancesco Favino, whose portrayal of Buscetta drew critics' praise, said he was a paradoxical figure with his own code of honour.

“What I found most difficult is that he is an assassin — he's a character that I can't forgive,” he said. 
“But he's quite a romantic which I am too,” with a deep love for his wife and children. 

“I thought about these things very deeply rooted in me and sometimes this made me a little bit afraid when I went home at night.”

In 1995, Buscetta gave evidence against former Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti in the latter's trial for alleged complicity in the murder of an investigative journalist. Andreotti was acquitted four years later.

READ ALSO: Europe underestimates 'cancer' of Italian mafia: experts

But after Buscetta's defection, several hundred mafiosi turned state informers in return for a new identity, protection for themselves and their families, and financial help.

His confessions allowed authorities to destabilise the mafia in the 1980 and 1990s, also touching off anti-mob demonstrations in Palermo, Bellocchio noted.

The film depicts how Buscetta revealed to judge Giovanni Falcone the makeup of the “Cupola”, the secret mafia executive in charge of running the international drug trade in the 1980s.

He also exposed the key role in that executive of Toto Riina, the feared “boss of bosses” who orchestrated a brutal murder campaign including the assassination of Falcone himself.

Buscetta eventually died aged 71, not of an assassin's bullet but of cancer in the US in 2000, where he was under a witness protection programme. He was surrounded by the surviving members of his family.

Bellocchio admitted that Buscetta's impact, while powerful, had only been temporary.

“The mafia wasn't completely destroyed — it was only a partial defeat,” he said.

Increasingly violent organised crime outfits pose the biggest threat to European security, outstripping terrorism and illegal migration, the EU police agency Europol said last month.

The Sicilian Cosa Nostra, Calabrian 'Ndrangheta and Neapolitan Camorra are still the largest crime groups on the continent.

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CRIME

Indians march to end ‘slavery’ after worker death shakes Italy

Thousands of Indian farm labourers urged an end to "slavery" in Italy on Tuesday after the gruesome death of a worker shone a light on the brutal exploitation of undocumented migrants.

Indians march to end 'slavery' after worker death shakes Italy

Satnam Singh, 31, who had been working without legal papers, died last week after his arm was sliced off by a machine. The farmer he was working for dumped him by the road, along with his severed limb.

“He was thrown out like a dog. There is exploitation every day, we suffer it every day, it must end now,” said Gurmukh Singh, head of the Indian community in the Lazio region of central Italy.

“We come here to work, not to die,” he told AFP.

Children held up colourful signs reading “Justice for Satnam Singh” as the procession snaked through Latina, a city in a rural area south of Rome that is home to tens of thousands of Indian migrant workers.

Indians have worked in the Agro Pontino – the Pontine Marshes – since the mid-1980s, harvesting pumpkins, leeks, beans and tomatoes, and working on flower farms or in buffalo mozzarella production.

Singh’s death is being investigated, but it has sparked a wider debate in Italy over how to tackle systemic abuses in the agriculture sector, where use of undocumented workers and their abuse by farmers or gangmasters is rife.

“Satnam died in one day, I die every day. Because I too am a labour victim,” said Parambar Singh, whose eye was seriously hurt in a work accident.

“My boss said he couldn’t take me to hospital because I didn’t have a contract,” said the 33-year-old, who has struggled to work since.

“I have been waiting 10 months for justice,” he said.

Paid a pittance

The workers get paid an average of 20 euros ($21) a day for up to 14 hours labour, according to the Osservatorio Placido Rizzotto, which analyses working conditions in the agriculture industry.

Far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has sought to reduce the number of undocumented migrants to Italy, while increasing pathways for legal migration for non-EU workers to tackle labour shortages.

But according to the Confagricoltura agribusiness association, only around 30 percent of workers given a visa actually travel to Italy, meaning there are never enough labourers to meet farmers’ needs.

This month, Meloni said Italy’s visa system was being exploited by organised crime groups to smuggle in illegal migrants.

She condemned the circumstances of Singh’s death, saying they were “inhumane acts that do not belong to the Italian people”.

“I hope that this barbarism will be harshly punished,” she told her cabinet ministers last week.

Italy’s financial police identified nearly 60,000 undocumented workers from January 2023 to June 2024.

But Italy’s largest trade union CGIL estimates that as many as 230,000 people – over a quarter of the country’s seasonal agricultural workers – do not have a contract.

While some are Italian, most are undocumented foreigners.

Female workers fare particularly badly, earning even less than their male counterparts and in some cases suffering sexual exploitation, it says.

“We all need regular job contracts, not to be trapped in this slavery,” said Kaur Akveer, a 37-year-old who was part of a group of women in colourful saris marching behind the community leaders.

“Satnam was like my brother. He must be the last Indian to die,” she said.

By AFP’s Ella Ide

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