Premier Giorgia Meloni visited
Palermo on Monday, when Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro was
arrested after 30 years on the run in the Sicilian city, and
said she wanted January 16 to become a national day dedicated to
the people who combat organized crime.
'We are used to remembering, above all, those who make the
ultimate sacrifice in the fight against the mafia," Meloni told
reporters.
"But there are people who sacrifice their entire existence to
achieve these goals.
"I would like today to be the day on which the work of these men
and women is celebrated.
"It is a proposal I will make - a day of celebration for us to
tell our children that the mafia can be beaten".
She said Monday was a "historic" day but stressed that the mafia
has not been defeated yet.
"We have not won the war," she said.
"But this was a fundamental battle to win and it is a big blow
to organised crime".
Meloni added that her government would take action to ensure
that people do not turn to the Mafia because the State fails to
provide answers to their problems.
Referring to people like those in Palermo who applauded when
Messina Denaro was arrested at a private clinic on Monday, she
she "they will not be left alone.
"The message is to continue to believe that the State can give
better answers, that the State is there, it will take care of
them, we will do our best so that they will never have to find
themselves in the situation of despair of having to do something
they never want to do," she said.
"But they must also have the alternative and we must build the
alternative, we must do everything we can, because that is the
most effective tool in the fight against the cancer of the
mafia".
The premier also held a minute's silence on Monday at the site
of the Capaci bombing, the Cosa Nostra attack in which
anti-mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone was killed along with his
wife and three police bodyguards in May 1992.
Falcone's friend and colleague Paolo Borsellino was killed in
another mafia bombing along with five members of his security
detail two months later.
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