Grigo: “When Falcone and I interrogated Buscetta in Tiberina Island”

He can still see that great and esteemed colleague, who risked his life every day and who was the victim of a deadly attack, which shocked the whole country. Varese State prosecutor Maurizio Grigo, talking about that tragic event, is more reserved than usual.

Before coming to Varese to work as prosecutor, Grigo worked for 35 years in Milan court: he became magistrate in 1969; in 1970 he had already been appointed judge in the same court. During his long career, filled with trials and important inquiries (Ramelli’s murder, Tobagi’s case, Piazza della Loggia massacre, Protezione account, “All Iberian” company, the bribery in Guardia di Finanza and Islamic terrorism. He was also the executive of examining justice during “Mani pulite” inquiry), he also met prosecuting magistrate Falcone. Grigo explains: “At that moment I was a young magistrate. They sent me from Milan to Sicily in order to acquire information about some very tricky inquiries we were carrying out. It was a secret journey: for everybody I was on holiday! On that occasion I met Falcone and we started our intense working relationship. Thanks to this relationship I went to Rome and to Isola Tiberina with him, during Buscetta’s historic interrogation: it took place in the nunnery on the island. We had to obtain the Pope’s authorisation in order to enter that nunnery. I wasn’t there to take minutes: he personally dealt with interrogations transcriptions and he didn’t rely on anyone else. I’ve already at home one of his minutes, written in his own hand: 1200 pages.”

Grigo and Falcone had a respectful, trustful and friendly relationship, as far as possible for the “under-fire” magistrate: “I’m one of the people with whom he had the deepest working relationship, but I’ve never wanted to extensively talk about it” the prosecutor stresses. “When he came to Milan he lived with us. The same happened when I went to Palermo.” Grigo has decided talking of this relationship for the first time in a symbolically important context: a meeting about legality in front of Insubria University students.