Spatuzza confesses to 40 murders +rpt+

(refiling with correct slug)(ANSA) - Milan, September 30 - Sicilian Mafia mobster-turned-informant Gaspare Spatuzza confessed Tuesday to being responsible for the deaths of roughly 40 people, including the victims of Cosa Nostra bombings from 1992 to 1993. "I am responsible for about 40 murders. I ask forgiveness from the city, from the victims and from their relatives," said Spatuzza, who was heard in a Milan court via live video transmission from prison. Spatuzza is serving as a prosecution witness in the trial against Marcello Tutino, accused of having an insider role in a car bombing in downtown Milan on July 27, 1993. The dynamite blast near two contemporary art museums in Via Palestro, known as the Via Palestro Massacre, killed five people. "We have done horrible things," said Spatuzza. "To accuse Marcello Tutino is painful but for me it is an honour to be here to testify, for the sake of justice for the victims' families". The former Cosa Nostra crime boss has been convicted of six bomb attacks that took place from 1992 to 1993. The Sicilian Mafia resorted to bombings to assassinate leading anti-mafia magistrates and civilians near artistic heritage sites - such as the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and Milan's Galleria d'Arte Moderna - in a bid to weaken the Italian State. "I decided to collaborate for justice. And now when I go bed, I feel honest and in peace because I am doing everything I can do for the law, then I will put myself in the hands of God," Spatuzza told presiding judge Guido Piffer, who asked his motivations for becoming a collaborator. "I participated in monstrous things and I have had terrible experiences. We have sold our souls to Satan. I am now freeing myself of the evil I carried inside, beginning with a painful path of repentance and distancing myself from everything that represented for me the environment in which I have always lived". Spatuzza said that from 2008, when he decided to repent, he began his "years of greatest suffering" - even worse than his imprisonment under the "regime 41 bis" crackdown law that suspended prisoner rights for serious offenders like mafia killers. The former mobster explained he will always continue to "ask for forgiveness" from bombing victims, among them "two little angels". Spatuzza was referring to the Nencioni sisters, an infant and a nine-year-old who were killed with their parents in a May 1993 bombing near the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.