Relatives of Mafia victims on Tuesday reacted with fury to fan club pages dedicated to jailed Cosa Nostra superbosses Salvatore (Toto') Riina
Toto' 'The Beast' Riina, 78, was the undisputed Cosa Nostra 'boss of bosses' until his arrest in January 1993 and is currently serving twelve life sentences for murder.Relatives of Mafia victims on Tuesday reacted with fury to fan club pages dedicated to jailed Cosa Nostra superbosses Salvatore (Toto') Riina and Bernardo Provenzano that have been set up on the social networking site Facebook.
Maria Falcone, the sister of anti-Mafia crusading magistrate Giovanni Falcone, who was assassinated with fellow judge Paolo Borsellino in 1992 on the orders of the two bosses, told daily La Repubblica she was ''outraged'' at the phenomenon.
''Unfortunately, evil still fascinates our young people. Certain messages on the Internet and certain films are not helping,'' she added.A Facebook fan club dedicated to the mobster has almost 2,228 subscribers, who leave him messages wishing him a happy Christmas, telling him he's ''great'' and posting videos about him.Riina's successor, Bernardo Provenzano, has a smaller fan group with 202 subscribers who claim to ''honour someone who tricked the state for 40 years'' as well as a group calling for him to be made a saint with 152 subscribers.Another group on the site is searching for an ''official look-alike'' for the Cosa Nostra kingpin and posts photos of people bearing physical similarities to the 75-year-old.
A peasant who rose up the Mafia's ranks through his ability as a killer, Provenzano took over from his fellow Corleone townsman Riina after his arrest.
Provenzano helped run the Mafia from various hiding places for more than 40 years before police caught up with him at a sheep farm outside Corleone in April 2006.
Many individual Facebook users have meanwhile signed on to the site using the names and photos of Riina, Provenzano and Trapani boss Matteo Messina Denaro, the last of Provenzano's key henchmen still at large.A former Porsche-driving playboy from Trapani, 46-year-old Messina Denaro has been on the run since 1993 and enjoys a semi-mythical status among the younger generations of Cosa Nostra.The gangster sealed a reputation for brutality by murdering a rival Trapani boss and strangling his three-month-pregnant girlfriend.Facebook users accepted as 'friends' by people claiming to be the mobster post messages asking if they are ''the real Messina Denaro'' and telling them they are ''honoured by his friendship''.Maggiani Chelli, whose association is still seeking justice over the Florence bombings, hit out at a lack of public and state support for victims.''In the face of so much indifference and isolation for us, it's quite right that the subscribers to Facebook should write 'Riina is great' and look for Bernardo Provenzano clones. At the end of the day, they've won,'' she said.However, for now fan pages on the site dedicated to Falcone and Borsellino remain significantly more popular than those of the Mafia bosses, with 184,206 subscribers.
''Subscribers to these groups are going crazy over the Mafia bosses and laughing at extremely serious crimes,'' said Giovanna Maggiani Chelli of the Victims of Via Georgofili association, which is named after the site of a Mafia bombing in Florence in 1993.
Maria Falcone, the sister of anti-Mafia crusading magistrate Giovanni Falcone, who was assassinated with fellow judge Paolo Borsellino in 1992 on the orders of the two bosses, told daily La Repubblica she was ''outraged'' at the phenomenon.
''Unfortunately, evil still fascinates our young people. Certain messages on the Internet and certain films are not helping,'' she added.A Facebook fan club dedicated to the mobster has almost 2,228 subscribers, who leave him messages wishing him a happy Christmas, telling him he's ''great'' and posting videos about him.Riina's successor, Bernardo Provenzano, has a smaller fan group with 202 subscribers who claim to ''honour someone who tricked the state for 40 years'' as well as a group calling for him to be made a saint with 152 subscribers.Another group on the site is searching for an ''official look-alike'' for the Cosa Nostra kingpin and posts photos of people bearing physical similarities to the 75-year-old.
A peasant who rose up the Mafia's ranks through his ability as a killer, Provenzano took over from his fellow Corleone townsman Riina after his arrest.
Provenzano helped run the Mafia from various hiding places for more than 40 years before police caught up with him at a sheep farm outside Corleone in April 2006.
Many individual Facebook users have meanwhile signed on to the site using the names and photos of Riina, Provenzano and Trapani boss Matteo Messina Denaro, the last of Provenzano's key henchmen still at large.A former Porsche-driving playboy from Trapani, 46-year-old Messina Denaro has been on the run since 1993 and enjoys a semi-mythical status among the younger generations of Cosa Nostra.The gangster sealed a reputation for brutality by murdering a rival Trapani boss and strangling his three-month-pregnant girlfriend.Facebook users accepted as 'friends' by people claiming to be the mobster post messages asking if they are ''the real Messina Denaro'' and telling them they are ''honoured by his friendship''.Maggiani Chelli, whose association is still seeking justice over the Florence bombings, hit out at a lack of public and state support for victims.''In the face of so much indifference and isolation for us, it's quite right that the subscribers to Facebook should write 'Riina is great' and look for Bernardo Provenzano clones. At the end of the day, they've won,'' she said.However, for now fan pages on the site dedicated to Falcone and Borsellino remain significantly more popular than those of the Mafia bosses, with 184,206 subscribers.
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