page_title: Bernardo Mattarella
section_title: Accusations by Danilo Dolci
hierarchical_section_title: Bernardo Mattarella / Accusations of links with the Mafia / Accusations by Danilo Dolci
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Ministerraad van de EEG te Brussel bijeen gekomen. Bernardo Mattarella (minister van landbouw, Italie)
context_page_description: Bernardo Mattarella was an Italian politician for the Christian Democrat party. He was Minister of Italy several times, becoming one of the most important politician of his generation.
  Bernardo Mattarella was the father of Piersanti and Sergio Mattarella, who both became politicians as well; Sergio is the President of the Italian Republic since 3 February 2015 and Piersanti was President of the Regional Government of Sicily, before being assassinated in 1980 by Cosa Nostra.
context_section_description: The Antimafia activist Danilo Dolci also accused Mattarella of collusion with the Mafia. Dolci had been gathering evidence on the links between the Mafia and politicians for the Antimafia Commission, which was established in 1963. At a press conference in September 1965, he presented dozen of testimonies of people who had supposedly seen Mattarella meeting with leading mafiosi. Mattarella sued Dolci for libel. Mattarella's lawsuit for libel allowed Dolci “ampia facoltà di prova”, meaning that the defendant would have been declared innocent if he had been able to show that he had offended the plaintiff on the basis of true evidence. In the ensuing two-year trial, dozens of witnesses were heard and many documents were considered. Dolci made an application for an amnesty, but was sentenced to two years imprisonment for libel. He never served the verdict, because of a general pardon.
  When the Court refused to allow new evidence from witnesses, Dolci and Alasia decided that the trial was a travesty. They announced that under these circumstances they would no longer attempt to defend themselves. The remainder of the trial, therefore, took place with Dolci and Alasia absent from the courtroom. Dolci responded by broadcasting his opinions over a private radio station, which was promptly closed. On 21 June 1967, the Court of Rome, sentenced that Mattarella offered reliable evidence of his opposition to the Mafia in the entire course of his political career. The statements collected by the defendants – Dolci and his assistant Alasia – were considered nothing more than "deplorable gossip, malicious rumour or even simple lies." The Court was of the opinion that Mattarella "never had relations with the Mafia environment."
  Mattarella won the trial but lost a cabinet post in the new government of Aldo Moro. According to the journalist and politician Luigi Barzini, who had been a member of the Antimafia Commission, few of Dolci's charges against Mattarella, most of which were undoubtedly true but not all as decisive as he thought, could be proved in a court of law, as Sicilian witnesses rarely repeat in public what they might have said secretly to a trusted friend.
caption: Bernardo Mattarella in 1964.
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