Italian politicians salute Falcone

(ANSA) - Rome, May 23 - Italian political leaders on Friday honoured the memory of anti-mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone and four others murdered with him in a bomb blast set off by the Sicilian Mafia 22 years ago. Falcone, his wife Francesca Morvillo and police officers Rocco Dicillo, Antonio Montinaro and Vito Schifani were killed in an explosion on May 23, 1992 as they sped along the motorway from the Palermo airport to the city in what has come to be known as the Capaci Massacre, for name of the town where it took place.
    The assassination was ordered by the fugitive Sicilian boss of crime bosses Salvatore "Toto'" Riina in retaliation for the maxi-trial headed by Falcone, which had ended in definitive Supreme Court convictions for Riina and 360 others in January 1992. "May 23, thinking of Vito, Rocco Antonio. Of Francesca. Of him, Giovanni, who taught our students to fight the mafia," wrote Premier Matteo Renzi on the social network Twitter.
    In a ceremony held in in the Bunker hall of Palermo's Ucciardone prison, where the original maxi-trial took place in the 1980s, a girl read a message from President Giorgio Napolitano.
    Senate Speaker Pietro Grasso - a prominent anti-mafia prosecutor prior to becoming senator - at the same ceremony called for battling economic crimes of all forms "from working off the books to corruption".