Paolo Borsellino

Paolo Borsellino
Antimafia judge Paolo Borsellino
Born	(1940-01-19)January 19, 1940 Palermo, Sicily, Italy
Died	July 19, 1992(1992-07-19) (aged 52) Palermo
Cause of death	Killed by the Sicilian Mafia
Nationality	Italian
Occupation	Magistrate
Known for	Investigations into the Mafia

Paolo Borsellino (Italian: [ˈpaːolo borselˈliːno]; January 19, 1940 – July 19, 1992) was an Italian judge and prosecuting magistrate. He was killed by a Mafia car bomb in Palermo, 57 days after his friend and fellow Antimafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone was assassinated. He is considered to be one of the most important magistrates killed by the Sicilian Mafia and he is remembered as one of the main symbols of the battle of the State against the Mafia. Both Borsellino and Falcone were named as heroes of the last 60 years in the November 13, 2006, issue of Time Magazine. Forty-seven people were convicted in connection with his murder, but the entire case was discredited by the revelations of Gaspare Spatuzza.

Borsellino was born in a middle-class Palermo neighbourhood, Kalsa, a neighborhood of central Palermo which suffered extensive destruction by aerial attacks during the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943. His father was a pharmacist and his mother ran a pharmacy in the Via della Vitriera, next to the house were Paolo was born. As boys Borsellino and Falcone – who was born in the same neighbourhood – played soccer together on the Piazza Mangione. The Mafia was present in the area but quiescent. Both had classmates who ended up as mafiosi. The house where he was born was declared unsafe and the family was forced to move out in 1956. The pharmacy remained, while the neighbourhood around it crumbled.

Borsellino and Falcone met again at Palermo University. While Borsellino tended towards the right and became a member of the Fronte Universitario d'Azione Nazionale (FUAN), a right-wing university organization affiliated with the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano, Falcone drifted away from his parents' middle-class conservative Catholicism towards Communism. Both never joined a political party, however, and although the ideologies of those political movements were diametrically opposed, they paradoxically shared a history of opposing the Mafia. Their different political leanings did not thwart their friendship. Both decided to join the magistrature.