Torino. Interview with Giancarlo Caselli, head of the Public Prosecution office of Torino.
Giancarlo Caselli is a well known magistrate. He is head of the office of Public Prosecution of Torino. In the 80’s he worked as an investigating judge during trials which involved the Red Brigades. From 1986 to 1990 he was a member of the Superior Council of Magistrates (Csm). He arrived in Palermo in January 1993 on the exact day of Toto’ Riina’s arrest, right after Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino had been killed. In succeeding Antonino Caponnetto’s ten year legacy Giancarlo Caselli would continue to re-establish and revitalize the common activities and “collective method” which had been adopted by the antimafia pool in conducting investigations. Such method was “invented” and tested in Torino during the battle against terrorism.
Caselli was head of the Public Prosecution office of Palermo until 1999. He and prosecutors Roberto Scarpinato, Guido Lo Forte and Gioacchino Natoli signed a request to authorize investigations on senetor Giulio Andreotti. After his experience in Palermo Caselli was appointed general director of the Department of Penitentiary Administration. In 2001 he became a representative of a European Community organization in Bruxelles against organized crime called: Eurojust.
Magistrate Caselli, what’s happening on “planet Justice”, what is triggering these furious and blown out of proportion attacks on behalf of the ruling class?
Nothing new under the sun. We’ve been hearing the same things for more than fifteen years. Since the new ruling class has become object of trials and investigations, these people have engaged in an obsessive battle made up of laws to fit their needs and a daily campaign to discredit magistrates who have even been accused of wanting a coup. This is how one of the biggest italian anomalities over the past fifteen years has come to life: the refusal of a trial and of its management intended as a moment of collision on behalf of inquisited “excellencies” or “powerful” individuals. It is useless to say how these strategies of dispute with regards to the trial in itself ( the so called defence “from” the trial as opposed to defence”within” a trial) have nothing to do with a healthy and well functioning legislative system.
Are we infront of an anticipation of what this majority means when it speaks of a reform?
The italian legal system does not work. It’s long waiting times are a shame and nothing is done to make the system more efficient. Programmed reforms ( Superior Council of Magistrates, relationship between prosecutors and judiciary police, career seperation, compulsory penal action, interceptions) will not reduce trial times, not even for a minute. They will however, bear an effect, in one way or another, on magistrates’ independence. Magistrates who are less independent will have less of a chance to control situatuions on a 360 degree level, thus making them unable to investigate on power deviation. By the same tolken should we notice a non pluralist and a poorly independent information system, it becomes easy to see how such factors could give life to a twisted and tangled plot which endangers the quality of our democracy.
This is the knot of the matter: the information system, judges-in particular prosecutors-are being heavily conditioned. Berlusconi discredits compulsory penal action by saying that magistrates waste public money in useless investigations “against us”. Isn’t this the equivalent of introducing the idea that executive power or even the leader of the executive power should have control over newspapers and Prosecutors’ office agendas?
President Berlusconi and his similars have been attacking magistrates for years. The strategy is like variable geometry. This means that experience shows how the attacks can be inflicted on any magistrate, public prosecutor or judge, in whatever city he/she may be working in, each and evry single time he/she is unfortunate (this is the right word) enough to run into delicate matters. The same thing happened to my collegues in Palermo and I, throughout the years I worked in this office. In September 2003 I wrote an open letter to president Berlusconi, which was published by the newspaper “La Stampa of Torino”. In the letter I asked a few questions which are still sadly relevant today: “Is it right to descriminate a magistrate only because he is investigating a personality by relying on specific incidents? Viceversa, is it always correct to praise the magistrate who does not do a thing and assolves the defendant? If we reason in these terms are not the fundemental rules of justice turned upside down? Where do we draw the border line between the idea of an attack and intimidation?”. I ended the letter by saying that: even if this kind of reasoning was only meant to defend oneself from unfair accusations and as tyring as it may be it remains necessary. It would be wrong to keep quiet because nobody, not even the President has the right to insult, nor, may I add be unrespectful towards the legislative institution and, this makes of Italy, the only example of such behaviour in the entire world.
You just mentioned your work at the Public Prosecution office of Palermo. You must know magistrate Ingroia and his collegues very well since they work in that same office. In this moment they are once again opening very delicate investigations on mafia massacres. What is your opinion with regards to the conditions in which they are forced to work and on what they are doing?
Whomever has had anything to do with Antonio Ingroia or with Roberto Scarpinato knows that that their professionality cannot be questioned. Sure, they are magistrates who participate in political-cultural debates. But, it’s one thing to participate in political and cutural debates on a general level; they’re daily job is a totally different issue, for which they nurture an extraordinary institutional sensibility.
di Gemma Contin (fonte: Liberazione e ANTIMAFIADuemila, 12 settembre 2009)
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