A law to break the Mafia’s code of silence lets a killer go free

SHORTLY AFTER nine o’clock on a Monday night, Giovanni Brusca, his brother, their wives and children had abruptly to abandon their roast-chicken dinner. Armed, masked police burst into their rented villa and arrested both men.That was in 1996. On May 31st Mr Brusca left prison in Rome, a free man after serving 25 years of a 30-year sentence imposed for, among many murders, that in 1992 of Italy’s most renowned anti-Mafia prosecutor, Giovanni Falcone. Few recent events have stirred greater revulsion than the release of this former Mafia boss, nicknamed , (the Pig) in Sicilian. “This is not the justice Italy deserves,” railed Matteo Salvini, the leader of the populist Northern League.