'Cosa Nostra wanted to destabilize Italy

(ANSA) - Palermo, October 31 - The Sicilian Mafia wanted to destabilize Italy and possibly pave the way for a coup with an early 1990s bombing campaign against the State, according to President Giorgio Napolitano's Tuesday testimony at a State-Mafia trial hearing, made public Friday.
    The trial being held in Palermo is looking into allegations that the State engaged in talks with the Sicilian Mafia in a bid to stop a bloody bombing campaign that claimed the lives of crusading anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992 and killed 10 people and damaged art sites in Rome, Florence and Milan in 1993.
    Sources present at the hearing said Napolitano alleged that the bombings were "an ultimatum" aimed at easing a tough new prison regime called 41-bis for Cosa Nostra bosses.
    This was confirmed and expanded on Friday by the 86-page transcript. The bombings, Napolitano told prosecutor Nino Di Matteo on Tuesday, were a form of "extortion or outright pressure aimed at destabilizing the entire system, on the premise that there there might be disarray among State authorities". He also said then premier Carlo Azeglio Ciampi feared a coup was imminent. Another source of fears of a possible coup was an April, 1993 two-and-a half-hour blackout at Palazzo Chigi, which houses the premier's office, in what Napolitano called a "classic" pre-coup move.
    Prosecutors also asked Napolitano, who was the Lower House speaker at the time, about a 2012 letter from his legal adviser Loris D'Ambrosio, in which he referred to "unmentionable agreements" and appeared to imply Napolitano had known about the talks. Napolitano denied knowledge of the alleged talks, and in the transcript said D'Ambrosio, who died soon after writing the letter, was filled "with the spirit of truth" and that he and D'Ambrosio "worked as a team".
    Defendants in the trial include present and past Cosa Nostra bosses Totò Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, both of whom are behind bars, and ex Senator Marcello Dell'Utri, a former top aide of Silvio Berlusconi who is serving seven years for associating with the Mafia. Nicola Mancino, a former interior minister and Senate speaker is also on trial on charges of perjury, which he denies.