ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, May 22, 1996 TAG: 9605220067
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ROME
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
When police rushed into the beach hideout of Italy's most-wanted Mafia boss, they found him settled down to dinner and a movie - about his most famous alleged victim, anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone.
A copy of Falcone's book about the crime syndicate, ``Cose di Cosa Nostra'' (``Things About Cosa Nostra'') was also in the house where Giovanni Brusca was arrested Monday night.
Brusca's arrest was greeted with shouts of joy from police who brought him in a caravan of police cars from the tiny beach town of Cannatello on Sicily's southwest coast to police headquarters in Palermo.
On the way, they stopped briefly at the Palermo house where Falcone lived before the May 23, 1992, roadside explosion that killed him, his wife and three police guards.
Brusca, 36, is accused of hitting the detonator button that blew away part of the highway along with Falcone's car. Thursday will be the fourth anniversary of the slayings.
Police had to keep their angry colleagues away, but one managed to bloody Brusca's nose, the ANSA news agency said. Brusca was taken Tuesday to a maximum security prison.
Others already are on trial for Falcone's murder, but Brusca's arrest had a particular impact in the case that came to symbolize one of the Mafia's greatest blows, against the man who was its worst enemy.
According to prosecutors, Brusca belongs to a mob family closely allied with the mob bosses of Corleone, who in the 1980s rose to the apex of the Sicilian Mafia.
``Finally, the state is giving the strong response that Giovanni wanted,'' Falcone's sister, Maria, said Tuesday of Brusca's arrest.
Police had been on Brusca's trail since he narrowly escaped a raid at a hideout on Palermo's outskirts in mid-January.
Palermo police commander Luigi Savina said Tuesday that police traced Brusca to the Agrigento region on Sicily's southwest coast by following his subordinates.
They located the beach hideout by intercepting his cellular-phone conversations and following his wife from a hairdresser, Savina said. When a plainclothes officer drove by the house on a motorbike without its muffler and police tapping the phone heard the motor's roar, they knew they had the right place.
When police burst into the house, they found Brusca, his brother and their families tucking into a roast chicken and roast potato dinner in front of the T.V. - tuned to a movie about Falcone, Savina said.
According to prosecutors, Brusca belongs to a mob family closely allied with the mob bosses of Corleone, who in the 1980s rose to the apex of the Sicilian Mafia.
A report released Tuesday by the DIA anti-Mafia investigative agency said the Corleone leadership was in crisis following the arrests of top bosses, the seizure of its assets and new competition from the Russian and Chinese mobs. Two other reputed top bosses, Bernardo Provenzano and Pietro Aglieri, are still at large.
Brusca also is accused of heading the teams that planted car bombs in mid-1993 that damaged the Uffizi Museum in Florence, two churches in Rome and a public art gallery in Milan.
In the most chilling accusation, he is suspected of strangling the 11-year-old son of a Mafioso who turned state's evidence. The boy's body reportedly was thrown into a vat of acid.
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