GIULIO CAVALLI with CRISTIANO BANDINI
presents “L’innocenza di Giulio”, Ed. Chiarelettere
“L’innocenza di Giulio” investigates Andreotti’s relationships with Cosa Nostra (from dangerous friendships with cousins Salvo and Stefano Bontade, to summits with the bosses of bosses, to the “legendary” kiss with Totò Riina), for which he was tried, he preempted, was acquitted and then found guilty, then barred from the crimes, thanks to the usual stratagems of the little laws that slow down trials.
Judge Giancarlo Caselli writes, not without a slightly bitter aftertaste, in the preface to the volume: “The vast majority of Italian citizens are convinced that Andreotti is the victim of a persecution that forced him to a painful ordeal due to the judicial fury of a handful of scoundrels”.
In fact, things are different and barred means the opposite of innocent. The author of this enlightening investigative book takes just over 140 pages to tell and demonstrate how things are and he does so with courage, without pretense or mincing words, declaring from the beginning, in one of the most beautiful and unpompous introductions I have ever read, that what has emerged from his sacrosanct curiosity and his civil commitment is “a rude and quarrelsome book. Of an indignation that pulsates in the temples. Putting Andreotti on trial [beyond the courtrooms, editor’s note] means making the presumed democracy sit in the dock. A trial from which one cannot exempt oneself”.
