Italy Senate chief: Mafia planned to kill me next in 1992
ROME — The president of the Italian Senate revealed Saturday that the Mafia’s “boss of bosses” allegedly had targeted him to be assassinated next after twin bomb blasts killed Italy’s two leading Sicilian magistrates.
Senate President Piero Grasso served as a judge for the Mafia trial in the 1980s that yielded convictions for hundreds of mobsters. Among them was top Cosa Nostra boss Salvatore “Toto” Riina, then a fugitive who was tried in absentia.
Grasso told La Stampa newspaper in an interview that Mafia turncoats had revealed that Riina, who died Friday at age 87 in the prison ward of an Italian hospital, ordered a hit on him in 1992.
Investigators have said Riina commanded the Mafia during 23 years on the run. , Grasso said the mob boss targeted him after prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were killed by bomb attacks two months apart that year.