ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the count of "external complicity" and the "diversity of roles" whereby persons either "participate" in a Mafia-related organization or else "contribute" from the outside to the organization’s prosperity. The question of intentionality lay at the center of discussions about how to legally characterize a "Mafia crime". In the Cosa Nostra, initiatives for committing crimes always came from higher up. At the top of this intensely hierarchical system of domination was a "commission" that made decisions about the operations to undertake. The “Aiello trial” presents us with an arraignment of 19 persons indicted on counts corresponding to all forms of involvement in Mafia-related crimes, ranging from charges of “participation in a Mafia-type organization” through “external complicity” to favoreggiamento. The debate in legal circles about the charges to press against one of the major defendants – Salvatore Cuffaro, at the time, president of the Sicilian Region – provides us with insight into the legal categories invoked.
