'Iron Prefect' who 'eliminated' the Cosa Nostra
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| Cesare Mori was well known for his hard-line methods |
Cesare Mori, the prefect of police credited with crushing
the Sicilian Mafia during the inter-War years, died on this day in 1942 at the
age of 70.
At the time of his death he was living in retirement in
Udine, in some respects a forgotten figure in a country in the grip of the
Second World War.
Yet during his police career his reputation as a hard-line
law enforcer was such that the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini personally
appointed him as prefect of Palermo, charged with breaking the Mafia’s hold
over Sicily and re-establishing the authority of the State by any means
necessary.
Mori was born in Pavia in Lombardy, by then part of the new
Kingdom of Italy, in 1871. His
upbringing was difficult. His first
years were spent living in an orphanage, although his parents were not dead and
looked after him after he had turned seven.
He attended the Military Academy in Turin and was set on a
career in the army but after marrying Angelina Salvi in 1897 he quit and joined
the police, taking up a posting in Ravenna.
His first experience of Sicily came with a brief posting to
Castelvetrano, near Trapani, where he captured a notorious bandit, Paolo
Grisalfi, before moving to Florence in 1915.
Mori was sent back to Sicily after the First World War, at
which time the island was becoming virtually lawless, with gangs of bandits able
to operate almost with impunity. He was placed in charge of a special force
created to tackle brigandage.
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| Mori was uneasy about the Fascists but agreed to become a blackshirt to carry out his job |
He soon became known for taking a somewhat radical approach
to the job, pushing acceptable policing methods to their limits and sometimes
beyond. But they worked. In Caltabellotta, a town in rugged, mountainous
territory between Agrigento and Palermo, he arrested more than 300 suspected
bandits in just one night.
The press hailed the arrests as a "lethal blow to the
Mafia", but Mori was aware that these gangs of brigands were not the
Mafia, whose presence in Sicilian society was much less visible but far more
dangerous, with a sphere of influence that extended into business and local
government and even the local police forces.
Mori was actually uneasy about the rise of Fascism. Back on the mainland, as prefect of Bologna
he was one of the few policemen who opposed the suppression of opponents by thuggery that
was becoming part of the Fascist culture.
This led him to be posted to Bari, well away from the major centres of
Fascist activity. After Mussolini took power following the 1922 March on Rome,
Mori took it as his cue to retire, moving with his wife to Florence.
Yet the prospect of eliminating the so-called Cosa Nostra in Sicily
continued to interest him and when Mussolini’s Minister of the Interior, Luigi
Federzoni, approached him to return to policing in 1924, he accepted the
requirement to join the Fascist party as a condition of the job and took up the
post of prefect of Trapani.
Just over a year later, having determined that eliminating
the Mafia would bring him huge public support, Mussolini made contact with Mori
in person, asking him to become prefect of Palermo with 'carte blanche' to
re-establish the authority of the Italian government, promising to draw up any
new laws he required to carry out the task.
In a four-year campaign, Mori became known as ‘the Iron
Prefect’, employing methods that included violence and intimidation on a scale
almost the equal of the tactics used by the Mafia themselves.
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| Joseph Bonanno left Sicily to escape Mori's purge |
His men laid siege to entire towns, humiliating Mafia bosses
by dragging them out of their beds in the early hours, and countering the code
of silence – omertà – that all members were supposed to follow by using torture
to obtain information, even threatening harm to their families if they refused to
co-operate.
More than 11,000 arrests were made during his time in
charge. Mussolini rewarded him by making him a Senator and retiring him in
1929, his propaganda machine announcing to Italy that the Mafia had been
eradicated.
Whether that was true has been the subject of many
arguments. The murder rate on the island
dropped sharply in the 1930s as some Mafiosi chose to give evidence to police
in return for their own lives and others, such as Joseph Bonanno, relocated to
the United States and built crime empires there.
But, according to some historians, too many of Mori’s
arrests were of minor figures and a substantial number of bosses simply went to
ground, content to lie low in the expectation that the Fascists would
eventually fall from power.
This was to come about, of course, with the Allied invasion
of 1943, which began in Sicily. Mafia
figures still on the island and in the US took the opportunity to offer their
help, both in encouraging Sicilians to turn against the Fascists and in passing
on their knowledge of the difficult terrain and often treacherous coastline.
As cities and towns fell and new local administrations were
appointed, Mafia figures manoeuvred themselves into key positions and, slowly
but surely, their power was restored.
Mori’s story has been the subject of several books and films,
notably the 1977 movie, Il prefetto di ferro – the Iron Prefect – directed by
Pasquale Squitieri and starring Giuliano Gemma and Claudia Cardinale, with
music by Ennio Morricone.
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| The old part of Trapani sits on a promontory |
Travel tip:
Situated on the western coast of Sicily, Trapani is a
fishing and ferry port notable for a curving harbour, where Peter of Aragon
landed in 1282 to begin the Spanish occupation of Sicily. Well placed
strategically to trade with Africa as well as the Italian mainland, Trapani was
once the hub of a commercial network that stretched from Carthage in what is
now Tunisia to Venice. Nowadays, the port is used by ferries serving Tunisia
and the smaller islands, as well as other Italian ports. The older part of the town, on a promontory
with the sea on either side, has some crumbling palaces and others that have been
well restored, as well as a number of military fortifications and notable
churches.
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| The Certosa di Pavia is notable for its lavish Gothic and Renaissance architecture |
Once a Roman military garrison, Pavia has a well preserved
historic centre and, 8km (5 miles) to the north side if the city, the
impressive Certosa di Pavia, a monastery complex built between 1396 and 1495.
It is the largest monastery in Italian and is renowned for its extravagant
Gothic and Renaissance style, a contrast to the plain, austere architecture
normally associated with Carthusian religious buildings. Pavia is also home to
one of Italy’s best universities, the alumni of which include explorer
Christopher Columbus, physicist Alessandro Volta and poet and revolutionary Ugo
Foscolo.
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