Libero Grassi was an Italian clothing manufacturer from Palermo

Palermo

Palermo is a city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...

, Sicily

Sicily

Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...

, who was killed by the Mafia

Mafia

The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...

 after taking a solitary stand against their extortion

Extortion

Extortion is a criminal offence which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion. Refraining from doing harm is sometimes euphemistically called protection. Extortion is commonly practiced by organized crime...

 demands, known as "pizzo

Pizzo (extortion)

In Southern Italy, the pizzo is protection money paid by a business to the Mafia, usually coerced and constituting extortion. The term is derived from the Sicilian pizzu . To wet someone's beak is to pay protection money...

" in Sicilian

Sicilian language

Sicilian is a Romance language. Its dialects make up the Extreme-Southern Italian language group, which are spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands; in southern and central Calabria ; in the southern parts of Apulia, the Salento ; and Campania, on the Italian mainland, where it is...

.

Grassi was born in Catania

Catania

Catania is an Italian city on the east coast of Sicily facing the Ionian Sea, between Messina and Syracuse. It is the capital of the homonymous province, and with 298,957 inhabitants it is the second-largest city in Sicily and the tenth in Italy.Catania is known to have a seismic history and...

. He was married and had a son and daughter.

Pizzo demands

Grassi ran the Sigma factory producing men's underwear and pyjamas in Palermo. The company had some 100 employees and a business volume of US$5 million in 1990. Like many businessmen in the city, he was soon subjected to demands to pay "pizzo" or face the consequences.

The "pizzo" – a form of protection racket

Protection racket

A protection racket is an extortion scheme whereby a criminal group or individual coerces a victim to pay money, supposedly for protection services against violence or property damage. Racketeers coerce reticent potential victims into buying "protection" by demonstrating what will happen if they...

 – is demanded by the Mafia to local businesses and the refusal to pay up can mean vandalism or arson

Arson

Arson is the crime of intentionally or maliciously setting fire to structures or wildland areas. It may be distinguished from other causes such as spontaneous combustion and natural wildfires...

 attacks on the place of business or even physical harm, even murder

Murder

Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...

, if demands are not met. The reputation of the Mafia is often enough to make people pay up immediately.

Refusal to pay pizzo

In late 1990, Grassi began to refuse to pay up, as an estimated 50% of Palermo businesses did. The extortionists demanded money "for their poor friends in jail" and threatened to kill him. On January 10, 1991, Grassi wrote an open letter in the Giornale di Sicilia

Giornale di Sicilia

Giornale di Sicilia is an Italian daily national newspaper based in Palermo, Sicily. It is also the best-selling newspaper in Sicily.It was founded in 1860, immediately following the Expedition of the Thousand headed by Giuseppe Garibaldi; it was first published on June 7 under the name "Giornale...

, a Palermo daily, that began, "Dear extortionist" and denounced the Mafia's demands for protection money and publicly announced his refusal to pay. The same day, he reported the names of his would-be extortionists to the police, a move that resulted in five arrests in March.

The next morning after the letter was published, the Mayor of Palermo, the prosecutor, the colonel of the federal police and the press showed up at his factory to show support. However, even after he got police protection, two strangers appeared claiming they were health inspectors, and once inside threatened the workers. Grassi became something of a national hero in Italy after appearing on nationwide TV on April 11, 1991 (at Michele Santoro

Michele Santoro

Michele Santoro is an Italian journalist, anchorman, television host and presenter.He also served till October 2005 as Member of the European Parliament for Southern Italy with the Olive Tree, part of the Socialist Group and sat on the European Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice...

's Samarcanda on Rai Tre

Rai Tre

Rai 3 is part of RAI, the Italian government broadcasting agency, which owns other channels, such as Rai 1 and Rai 2 . Rai 3 first started transmissions on December 15, 1979. In the eighties it was under the predominant political influence of the Italian Communist Party...

): a Sicilian businessman who stood up to the Mafia.

However, instead of receiving solidarity from other shopkeepers and businesses for his refusal to pay protection money, he was criticised, gradually isolated and accused of demolishing the image of the Palermo business world. In his interviews, he not only denounced the Mafia but also the way many of his fellow businessmen seemed to shun him, and how even customers began to cease to frequent his store in fear of being caught in the wrath of the Mafia who Grassi was provoking with his stance. Grassi stated in an interview:

Retaliations and murder

Grassi eventually had his shop broken into in early 1991 and the exact amount of money that had been demanded of him was stolen. An unsuccessful arson attack on his shop soon followed. On August 29, 1991, less than a year after taking his stance against the Mafia, the 67-year-old Grassi was gunned down in the via Vittorio Alfieri in Palermo at 7.30 in the morning. He was shot in the brain three times as he walked from his home to his car. No witnesses came forward. After the killing, 10,000 people took to the streets to protest his murder. On September 26, 1991, TV hosts Santoro and Maurizio Costanzo

Maurizio Costanzo

Maurizio Costanzo is an Italian television host and journalist. He is married to Maria De Filippi, an Italian television host.-Biography:Costanzo was born in Rome....

 – in a unique cooperation between the public Rai Tre

Rai Tre

Rai 3 is part of RAI, the Italian government broadcasting agency, which owns other channels, such as Rai 1 and Rai 2 . Rai 3 first started transmissions on December 15, 1979. In the eighties it was under the predominant political influence of the Italian Communist Party...

 and the private Canale 5

Canale 5

Canale 5 is an Italian private television network of Mediaset, the media branch of Fininvest. Canale 5 was the first private television network to have a national coverage in Italy in 1980, based on a local channel, TeleMilano 58, founded in 1978....

 – dedicated a joint five-hour nationwide television programme to the memory of Grassi, with the participation of anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone

Giovanni Falcone

Giovanni Falcone was an Sicilian/Italian prosecuting magistrate born in Palermo, Sicily. From his office in the Palace of Justice in Palermo, he spent most of his professional life trying to overthrow the power of the Mafia in Sicily...

.

Libero Grassi's wife, Pina Grassi, and her children, Davide and Alice, tried to salvage the family firm. "I was terrified for their safety so as the threats continued after Libero's killing, we reluctantly agreed to allow a state holding to run the company with Davide keeping a share," Pina recalls. Incompetent public sector management later sent it bankrupt.

Killers convicted

Although it took some time, his killer, the Mafioso Salvatore Salvino Madonia and his father Francesco Madonia

Francesco Madonia

Francesco Ciccio Madonia was the Mafia boss of the San Lorenzo-Pallavicino area in Palermo. In 1978 he became a member of the Sicilian Mafia Commission....

, the unquestioned patriarch of the Resuttana Mafia family in Palermo

Palermo

Palermo is a city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...

, were eventually brought to justice. According to a Mafia turncoat, Salvatore Madonia personally killed Grassi. A large trial in October 2006 saw thirty mobsters convicted of sixty murders dating back a quarter-of-a-century, with the Madonias convicted of Grassi's slaying.

In 2006, not long after Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano

Bernardo Provenzano

Bernardo Provenzano is a member of the Sicilian Mafia and is suspected of having been the head of the Corleonesi, a Mafia faction that originated in the village of Corleone, and de facto capo di tutti capi of the entire Sicilian Mafia until his arrest in 2006.His nickname is Binnu u tratturi...

 was arrested, a hundred shopkeepers in Palermo publicly declared their refusal to pay extortion to the Mafia, with Grassi's widow Pina Maisano, and son and daughter Davide and Alice, in attendance at public rallies denouncing the Mafia, jointly with the Addiopizzo

Addiopizzo

Addiopizzo is a grassroots movement established to build a community of businesses and consumers who refuse to pay "pizzo" – Mafia extortion money. It is a grassroots social-conscience motivated consumer movement analogous to Fair Trade...

 movement.

On the spot where he was killed in the via Vittorio Alfieri a placard put up by his wife and children that says:

Every year on August 29 people gather here to commemorate the act of Grassi and protest against extortion.

External links

• Remembering Libero Grassi at Best of Sicily letter of Libero Grassi, published in the Corriere della Sera, the day after he was killed.