Pentito
(Redirected from Pentiti)
Categories: Organized crime terminology
Pentito (Italian repented, plural pentiti) is the name customarily given to former members of an Italian Mafia that have abandoned their organisation and started helping in investigations.
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Role and Benefits
The pentiti were first created in order to fight terrorism in the 1970s. Their correct technical name in Italian is collaboratori di giustizia ("Justice collaborators").
In exchange for the information they deliver, pentiti receive shorter sentences for their crimes, in some cases even freedom. In the Italian judicial system, pentiti can obtain personal protection, a new name, and some money to start a new life in another place, possibly abroad. This practice is common in other countries as well: in the United States, criminals testifying against their former associates can enter the Witness Protection Program, and be given new identities, with supporting paperwork.
Among the most famous Mafia pentiti is Tommaso Buscetta, the first important pentito, who was very helpful to judge Giovanni Falcone in describing the Cupola, the leadership of the Sicilian Mafia in the 1980s, and identifying the main operational channels that the mafia used and uses for its business.
In Italy, important successes were achieved with the cooperation of pentiti in the fight against terrorism (specially against the Red Brigades), by Carabinieri general Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa (later killed by the Mafia).
In some cases, pentiti have invented stories, in order to obtain reductions in jail time. A famous case regarded the popular TV anchorman Enzo Tortora, who was accused of cocaine trafficking by a pentito. Tortora was detained for years before being cleared; he developed cancer and died soon after the case was finally solved, some say because of the emotional stress of his imprisonment.
Cultural acceptance
In southern-Italian communities where the Mafia has a strong grip, becoming a pentito or having one in the family is tantamount to a death sentence. Tommaso Buscetta, for example, had all of his family exterminated with a long series of murders spanning many years.
Furthermore, in the most degraded areas, where people live on the borderline of legality or beyond, there is an induced subculture of hostility towards public institutions and of trust in the Mafia. People will not collaborate with the police (a phenomenon known as omertà), and will consider any pentito an infame, a quisling.
Since the pentito himself is physically protected by the police, retribution on his family is common; therefore, when there are rumours of a mafioso collaborating with the police, the family usually condemns that immediately, in order to avoid retaliation.
Abuse of the term
It is often pointed out that the correct term should be collaboratori di giustizia, or "justice collaborators". The word pentito implies a moral judgement that is considered inappropriate for the courts of justice to make.
Criticism
In Italy, pentiti have come under criticism because of the favours they receive and because:
- they would invent stories in order to receive benefits;
- they would invent stories in order to persecute people they do not like;
- their employement is seen as a reward for criminals, instead of a punishment;
- they would be unreliable, since they come from a criminal organisation.
Criticism comes most often from politicians, especially when they or an associate of theirs is under investigation for connections to the Mafia. It is therefore interpreted by some as an attempt to discredit one's own accusers, instead of a genuine preoccupation of the common citizen's civil rights.
Luciano Violante, an anti-mafia former prosecutor and politician, countered that "We do not find information about the Mafia among nuns".[1]
Laws have been passed that bar pentiti to obtain substantial benefits unless their revelations are later deemed new material, and lead to concrete results; there have been proposals to accept revelations only for six months, after which their revelations could not be used in court.
This has had the effect of reducing the appeal of becoming a pentito, since a single mafia associate does not know whether his knowledge will be useful to the prosecutors at the time of defection. Defection from mafia in Italy have subsequently sharply reduced from the height reached in the early nineties, and results in the fight against mafia have reduced accordingly.
References
- ^ Luciano Violante, Non è la piovra: Dodici tesi sulle mafie italiane ("It is not the octopus: twelwe theses on Italian Mafias"), Einaudi, 1994, ISBN 8806134019.
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