My life has been hell since mafia bosses blamed me for their downfall. Finally, justice has been done

The Guardian

3 days ago

What criminal organisations fear most is the written word. That is what a court in Italy has established for the first time. It has taken 17 years for me to see justice done, but it finally came on 14 July. The court of appeals in Rome upheld a 2021 verdict in which the mafia boss Francesco Bidognetti and his former lawyer were found guilty of mafia-related threats against me.
Bidognetti is the head of one of the most powerful and violent Camorra clans: the Casalesi. He is already in jail, serving a life sentence. Yet far from being merely symbolic, the new sentences (Bidognetti got a year and a half, his lawyer Michele Santonastaso a year and two months) are momentous.
They are punishment for a case that involved no ordinary act of intimidation, but one that was unique in the history of organised crime. It was performed in public in March 2008, during the 10-year 'Spartacus' maxi-trial, which involved 115 defendants and resulted in 27 life sentences including Bidognetti's.
That day, through his lawyer, Bidognetti publicly expressed his own criminal truth by singling out two journalists – myself and Rosaria Capacchione – to be held responsible if he were convicted. Santonastaso read a document aloud in court – a 'proclamation' that we later learned echoed statements made by terrorist organisations.
It was an unprecedented act in the history of mafia trials. The message was chilling: if the two mafia bosses in the dock, Bidognetti and Antonio Iovine, ended up in prison – as they did – the guilt would be ours. Our reporting, our complaints and our influence on prosecutors would be to blame.
After reading out the document, Santonastaso removed his robes. It was a symbolic gesture to say from that moment on, the game would be played outside the walls of the court. The proclamation had served a specific purpose: to silence me and other journalists, and inform people outside the court that those responsible for Bidognetti's conviction had names.
At the time, a murderous Camorra hit squad operated a reign of terror in Campania. It reported directly to Bidognetti. This armed gang, led by Giuseppe Setola, committed a vast number of heinous crimes intended to demonstrate that the power of the clan persisted, despite trials and convictions. In September 2008, for example, Setola spearheaded the Castel Volturno killing, in which six Nigerian migrants, who had no involvement in criminal activity, lost their lives.
To understand the scope of the proclamation against me it is important to also understand the history and savagery of its author. Bidognetti, nicknamed Cicciotto di Mezzanotte – because anyone who stood between him and his business would see mezzanotte (midnight) descend on them – heads an organisation that built its power on blood, fear and the devastation of its territory through the illegal dumping of toxic waste all over Italy.
In 1993 he ordered the murder of Gennaro Falco, an innocent doctor who had been treating Bidognetti's first wife, Teresa Tamburrino. Falco was accused by the Bidognetti family of failing to diagnose a tumour in time to save her life. The doctor was murdered by Bidognetti's son, Raffaele.
But the violence did not start there. In December 1980, during a shootout, Bidognetti used Filomena Morlando, 25, as a human shield. She was killed in the crossfire. In another incident, Antonio Petito, a young man who had no involvement with the Camorra, had an altercation with another of Bidognetti's sons, Gianluca. Petito was killed for 'lack of respect for the boss's son'.
After the proclamation in court, my protection was immediately strengthened, from level three (an armoured car and two agents) to level two (two armoured cars and five agents). Life under protection means existing in an eternal armoured present, in a home that is both a refuge and a prison. It means losing not only your freedom of movement, but also your interpersonal and emotional freedom. Every encounter is behind closed doors. There is no privacy. Intimacy evaporates. Spontaneity is erased.
The consequences are not only practical, but profound. My romantic relationships have been compromised. Friendships have dwindled under the weight of my situation. Anyone who interacts with me feels the need to protect me, to absorb some of my tension. That is unbearable for anyone.
For 17 years I have faced trials, hearings and efforts to smear my name. Not only by the clans, but also elements of the state that were meant to protect me but instead made my isolation worse.
Anti-mafia reporting has been isolated, criminalised, dragged through tribunals. In this silence, the mafia has won. It has disappeared from public discourse, but not from reality. It has morphed into an economic power, a form of criminal capitalism – invisible but pervasive.
The 14 July verdict goes beyond symbolism: it was an act of judicial recognition that Bidognetti's 2008 proclamation was a threat, and directly related to his mafia enterprise. We can further deduce that it was a 'fatwa', a signal to anyone in the clan who might want to climb the ranks by eliminating a named target.
For the first time in a trial involving a crime organisation, we can see that the mafia considers investigative journalists to be the main cause of its defeats. According to this criminal logic, to write, report or investigate means to interfere with justice. And so those who write about the mafia have to be punished. It is an acknowledgment that anything that might happen to me from now on will bear its signature.
I emerge from this ordeal in pieces. I have sacrificed my life to an all-consuming battle. My existence is a form of life sentence, suspended between fear, isolation and surveillance. Solitude is the added punishment for courage.
It is likely that nothing in Italy will change, but I can at least say I helped expose the ways in which the mafia operates. And believe me, it is not limited to Italy – it is a network that targets global financial centres, including London.
I will remain under police protection indefinitely, because the judges confirmed that the mafia bosses fear what I write. But I don't want to go on living like this. Little by little, I will take responsibility for reclaiming my freedom – for taking my life back, even at my own risk. Enough of this half existence: neither fully alive, nor dead.
Roberto Saviano is a writer and journalist