Antimafia Pool

The Antimafia Pool was a group of examining magistrates at the Prosecuting Office of Palermo, Sicily, who closely worked together sharing information and developing new investigative and prosecutorial strategies against the Sicilian Mafia. An informal pool was created by Judge Rocco Chinnici in the early 1980s following the example of anti-terrorism judges in Northern Italy in the 1970s. Above all, they took on collective responsibility for pressing forward with Mafia prosecutions: every member of the pool co-signed prosecutorial orders so that no single magistrate would bear the particular danger that had proved fatal to Judge Gaetano Costa. Costa had put his signature to the indictments of 55 defendants from the heroin-trafficking network of the Spatola-Inzerillo-Gambino clan after nearly all his fellow prosecutors had refused to sign. News of this isolation leaked out of his office, and it ultimately led to his murder. He was killed on 6 August 1980, on the orders of Mafia boss Salvatore Inzerillo.