Cosa Nostra (Sicilian Mafia)

Cosa Nostra developed in western Sicily in the decades after Italian unification as a decentralized network of local 'families' (cosche) exercising territorial control through extortion, violence and the co-optation of landowners, politicians and police. It expanded into international drug trafficking in the twentieth century and, through the 'Sack of Palermo' construction racket and pervasive political ties, penetrated deep into Sicilian and national Italian politics. Facing an unprecedented investigative effort by magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, whose 1986-1987 Maxi Trial convicted hundreds of mafiosi, Cosa Nostra's leadership under Salvatore 'Toto' Riina responded with a campaign of assassination against the Italian state, killing Falcone in the May 1992 Capaci bombing and Borsellino in the July 1992 Via D'Amelio bombing. The public outrage that followed accelerated a sustained state crackdown that captured Riina in 1993 and severely weakened, though did not eliminate, the organization's power in subsequent decades.

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