The via D'Amelio bombing () was a terrorist attack by the Sicilian Mafia, which took place in Palermo, Sicily, Italy, on 19 July 1992. It killed Paolo Borsellino, the anti-mafia Italian magistrate, and five members of his police escort: Agostino Catalano, Emanuela Loi (the first Italian female member of a police escort and the first to be killed on duty), Vincenzo Li Muli, Walter Eddie Cosina, and Claudio Traina.
The so-called agenda rossa, the red notebook in which Borsellino used to write down details of his investigations and which he always carried with him, disappeared from the site in the moments after the explosion. A carabinieri officer who was present when the explosion occurred reported he had delivered the notebook to Giuseppe Ayala, the first Palermo magistrate to arrive at the scene. Ayala, who said he had refused to receive it, was later criticized for saying escorts to anti-mafia judges should be reduced, despite evidence of further failed attempts to kill them in subsequent years.
Bombing
The bombing occurred at 16:58 on 19 July 1992, 57 days after the Capaci bombing, in which Borsellino's friend, anti-mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone, had been killed with his wife and police escort. The only survivor of the escort in the bombing, Antonino Vullo, said the judge had stayed in his summer residence outside Palermo from 13:30 to around 16:00, when he and the escort drove to Via D'Amelio in the Sicilian capital, where he was to meet his mother. When they arrived, Vullo and the other agents noticed nothing unusual except some parked cars. The car in which Borsellino had been travelling exploded, along with one of the escort cars, while Vullo was sitting in a third car.
The bomb, containing some of TNT, had been placed in a Fiat 126. Normal procedure when Borsellino travelled was to clear the road of cars before his arrival, but this was not allowed by the administration of the comune of Palermo, as reported by another anti-mafia judge, Antonino Caponnetto. Gaspare Spatuzza, a mafioso who later became a pentito, eventually revealed he had stolen the Fiat 126 on the orders of the Graviano and Brancaccio mafia clans.
The bloodbath provoked outrage. The night after, protesters peacefully besieged the prefecture of Palermo. Borsellino's funeral saw vehement protests by the crowd against the participants; the national police chief, Arturo Parisi, was struck while trying to escape. A few days later, questore (local police commander) Vito Plantone and prefetto Mario Jovine were transferred. The chief prosecutor of Palermo, Pietro Giammanco, resigned. Meanwhile, 7,000 soldiers were sent to Sicily to patrol roads and possible locations for attacks.
Aftermath
Borsellino used to carry a red notebook, the so-called agenda rossa, in which he wrote down details of his investigations before making an official record in judicial reports. His colleagues were not given access to the agenda rossa.
Carabinieri officer Rosario Farinella said later that, after recovering the agenda rossa from the car, he gave it to Ayala. Ayala said he was staying in a hotel nearby and rushed to the place after hearing the explosion. He initially stumbled on the corpse of Borsellino without recognizing it, as the dead judge was limbless. Ayala said "an officer in uniform" had offered him the notebook, but that he had refused it because he lacked authority. Carabinieri captain Arcangioli said he was not wearing uniform at the scene. In September 2005, Ayala changed his version, saying he took the agenda rossa while exploring the destroyed car and later gave it to a carabinieri officer who was there. Ayala's subsequent statements speak of an agent alternately in uniform and not in uniform.
On 1 July 1992 Borsellino had held a meeting with Nicola Mancino, who at the time had just been appointed Minister of the Interior. Details of the meeting have never been disclosed, but it is likely that Borsellino had annotated them in his agenda. Mancino, however, always denied having met Borsellino. In a television interview of 24 July 2009, Ayala said, "Mancino himself told me that he had met Borsellino on 1 July 1992. Moreover, Mancino showed me his appointments book, with the name of Borsellino on it." Ayala repudiated this account in an interview in Sette magazine. A video showing Arcangioli holding the agenda rossa while inspecting the bombing area was aired in news on Italian state channel Rai 1 in 2006.
A personal diary in the possession of Borsellino's family has an annotation by the judge that reads: "1 July h 19:30 : Mancino". Vittorio Aliquò, another magistrate, later said he had accompanied Borsellino "up to the threshold of the minister's office".