Palermo (gro) Giuseppe Dainotti, 67, a former boss of the Cosa Nostra who was shot dead in the open street, was buried quietly in Palermo. Palermo’s police chief Renato Cortese had banned a public funeral service and procession as a precaution. The authorities are still concerned that three years ago the funeral of a certain Giuseppe di Giacomo had been the subject of a lavish spectacle with floral decorations and heavy black cars in the southwest of the city center, with thousands of onlookers and dubious expressions of sympathy. The movie-like display earned Palermo negative headlines throughout Italy.
Where the former summer residence of the Normans stands.
Di Giacomo had, as far as is known, died of natural causes in 2014. He was considered the boss of the quarter La Zisa, named after a summer residence of the “Northmen” built by Arab builders at the behest of the Normans who ruled Sicily at the time in the 12th century. Giuseppe Dainotti also lived in the La Zisa district, which houses a cultural center for Islamic art and the Goethe Institute, until his murder. Both Di Giacomo and Dainotti belonged to the Cosa Nostra clan Porta Nuova, named after Palermo’s once most important city gate at the northwest corner of the royal palace (palazzo reale), which today houses Sicily’s regional parliament.
With “life sentence” at large.
It was a week ago today that Giuseppe Dainotti was struck down in via D’Ossuna (pictured above) by several pistol shots. Dainotti was riding his new bicycle not far from his apartment, where he lived with his 44-year-old wife after his early release from prison. Dainotti had been sentenced to life in prison for murder and robbery, but was freed after 30 years following an appeal and a trial before the European Court of Justice.
Supposedly it was an act of revenge.
In Palermo, there is now speculation that Dainotti also secured his early release by “singing” to anti-Mafia specialists, who are particularly feared in Sicily. The murder on the open road by two young men who shot at him from a motorcycle may then have been a classic, punishing act of revenge.