Libero Grassi

Grassi ran the Sigma factory producing men's underwear and pyjamas in Palermo. The company had around 100 employees and a business volume of US$5 million in 1990.[1] Like many businessmen in the city, he was soon subjected to demands to pay "pizzo" or face the consequences.[2] The "pizzo" – a form of protection racket – is demanded by the Mafia to local businesses and the refusal to pay up can mean vandalism or arson attacks on the place of business, or even physical harm, including murder, if demands are not met.

In late 1990, Grassi began to refuse to pay up, as did an estimated 50% of Palermo businesses. The extortionists demanded money "for their poor friends in jail" and threatened to kill him.[3] On January 10, 1991, Grassi wrote an open letter in the Giornale di Sicilia, a Palermo daily, that began "Dear extortionist," in which he denounced the Mafia's demands for protection money and publicly announced his refusal to pay.[4] The same day, he reported the names of his would-be extortionists to the police, a move that resulted in five arrests in March.[1][5]

The morning after the letter was published, the Mayor of Palermo, the prosecutor, the colonel of the federal police, and the press showed up at his factory to show support. However, even after he got police protection, two strangers appeared who claimed to be health inspectors and threatened the workers once they were inside.[3] Grassi became something of a national hero in Italy, a Sicilian businessman who stood up to the Mafia, after appearing on nationwide TV on April 11, 1991 (at Michele Santoro's Samarcanda on Rai Tre).[4]

However, instead of receiving solidarity from other shopkeepers and businesses for his refusal to pay protection money, he was criticised, gradually isolated, and accused of demolishing the image of the Palermo business world. In his interviews, he denounced the Mafia and also the way that many of his fellow businessmen seemed to shun him, and how even customers ceased to frequent his store in fear of being caught in the wrath of the Mafia whom Grassi was provoking with his stance. Grassi stated in an interview:

My colleagues have begun to attack me, saying that one should not wash dirty clothes in public. But in the meantime they continue to put up with it; because I know that they all pay. In my opinion, being intimidated and being collusive is the same thing. Some confess to giving in out of fear, others boast about having important strings to pull. These are very common attitudes; but I think that if everyone was ready to collaborate with the police and carabinieri, to report and to name names, this racketeering would not last long.[6]

Grassi eventually had his shop broken into in early 1991 and the exact amount of money was stolen that had been demanded of him. An unsuccessful arson attack on his shop soon followed. The 67-year-old Grassi was gunned down in the via Vittorio Alfieri in Palermo at 7:30 in the morning on August 29, 1991, less than a year after taking his stance against the Mafia.[4] He was shot in the head three times as he walked from his home to his car. No witnesses came forward.[1] After the killing, 10,000 people took to the streets to protest his murder.[7] On September 26, 1991, TV hosts Santoro and Maurizio Costanzo dedicated a joint five-hour nationwide television programme to the memory of Grassi in a unique cooperation between the public Rai Tre and the private Canale 5, with the participation of anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone.[8]

Libero Grassi's wife Pina and their children Davide and Alice tried to keep the family firm going. "I was terrified for their safety so, as the threats continued after Libero's killing, we reluctantly agreed to allow a state holding to run the company with Davide keeping a share," Pina recalls. It eventually went bankrupt.[2]

It took some time, but killer Mafioso Salvatore "Salvino" Madonia and his father Francesco Madonia, the unquestioned patriarch of the Resuttana Mafia family in Palermo, were eventually brought to justice. According to a Mafia turncoat, Salvatore Madonia personally killed Grassi.[9] A large trial in October 2006 saw thirty mobsters convicted of sixty murders dating back a quarter-of-a-century, with the Madonias convicted of Grassi's slaying.[10][11]

A hundred shopkeepers in Palermo publicly declared their refusal to pay extortion to the Mafia in 2006, not long after Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano was arrested, with Grassi's widow Pina and children Davide and Alice in attendance at public rallies denouncing the Mafia jointly with the Addiopizzo movement.[12]

His wife and children put up a placard on the spot where he was killed in the via Vittorio Alfieri which says:

Here was murdered Libero Grassi, entrepreneur, brave man, killed by the Mafia, by the omertà of the associations of industrialists, by the indifference of parties and absence of the state.[4]

Every year on August 29, people gather here to commemorate the act of Grassi and protest against extortion.[13]

• List of victims of the Sicilian Mafia

• Jamieson, Alison (2000). The Antimafia: Italy’s fight against organized crime, London: Macmillan Press ISBN 0-333-80158-X.
• Stille, Alexander (1995). Excellent Cadavers. The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic, New York: Vintage ISBN 0-09-959491-9

• Remembering Libero Grassi at Best of Sicily
• (in Italian) letter of Libero Grassi, published in the Corriere della Sera, the day after he was killed.