‘Mafia tour’ angers victims

Atravel agency in Sicily offering a ‘mafia tour’ has found itself in the firing line after local authorities and relatives of victims slammed it for glorifying organised crime.

Easy Trapani lays on half or full-day visits to Mafia museums and places known to have housed infamous mobster chiefs, with a plate of pasta and meatballs thrown in — much to the fury of antimafia campaigners.

Maria Falcone, the sister of an anti-mafia judge killed by the Mafia in 1992, yesterday denounced the tour as “an insult to the pain of the victims and a slap in the face to those who labour every day to eradicate the Mafia culture”.

‘Silence kills’

Tour manager Gianni Grillo, who accompanies tourists himself to towns such as Corleone — made famous in the Godfather films — insists on the agency’s website that the outing is in essence an ‘anti-mafia tour’ because it raises awareness.

The excursions will give visitors “a broader understanding about the influence of Cosa Nostra crime that continues to affect Sicilian society,” he said.

“The Mafia kills, silence too,” reads the site, quoting Italian journalist Peppino Impastato, who publicly denounced the Mafia and was murdered in 1978 aged 30.

But Trapani mayor Vito Damiano has demanded the agency’s website be shut down. “It is madness, an offence to an entire city,” he said, according to the Repubblica daily.

Tour packages can include visits to houses lived in by Toto Riina, the “boss of bosses” and Bernardo Provenzano, nicknamed “the tractor” for the way he “mowed down” his victims.