Giovanni Falcone
Italian magistrate murdered by the Mafia (1939-1992) · Italy · Lawyers · Died at 53 · also Serbia
Giovanni Falcone is read about 1,474 times a day, in 44 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 15 October 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 390 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?He built the case that brought the Sicilian Mafia to trial - and paid for it on a motorway outside Palermo when half a ton of explosives tore through his convoy in 1992.
A life in dates
Also in Deutsch
Photos 8
In their own words 10
, The mafia [...] has long served as a model for organized crime.
This is the happy country where, if someone plants a bomb under your house and it doesn't explode, it's your fault for not detonating it.
I believe we need to realize that this is not a personal battle between us and the mafia.
Awards
In their orbit 2
About this person
Giovanni Falcone was born 18 May 1939 in Palermo, where he and his childhood friend Paolo Borsellino grew up in a neighbourhood thick with Mafia presence. From his office in the Palace of Justice, Falcone spent most of his professional life as a prosecuting magistrate dismantling the power structure of the Sicilian Mafia. The work culminated in the Maxi Trial of 1986-1987, a landmark prosecution that shook the organisation. On 23 May 1992, five days after his fifty-third birthday, the Corleonesi Mafia killed him in the Capaci bombing on the A29 motorway near Capaci. Borsellino was killed weeks later. Both men were awarded the Gold Medal for Civil Valor, acknowledged as martyrs of the Catholic Church, and named by Time in 2006 as heroes of the last sixty years.
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