Gioacchino La Barbera

Who is Gioacchino La Barbera?

Gioacchino La Barbera is a member of the Mafia who became a pentito. He was one of the key witnesses in the trial against the killers of Antimafia judge Giovanni Falcone.

La Barbera was born in Altofonte, in the province of Palermo. In 1981 he was initiated in the Altofonte cosca and in 1986 he became the regent of the Altofonte Mafia family after the arrest of Bernardo Brusca.

After the arrest of Mafia boss Totò Riina in January 1993, the remaining bosses, among them La Barbera, Giuseppe Graviano, Matteo Messina Denaro, Giovanni Brusca, Leoluca Bagarella, and Antonino Gioè came together a few times. They decided on a strategy to force the Italian state to retreat. That resulted in a series of bomb attacks in 1993 in the Via dei Georgofili in Florence, in Via Palestro in Milan and in the Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano and Via San Teodoro in Rome, which left 10 people dead and 93 injured as well as damage to centres of cultural heritage such as the Uffizi Gallery.

On March 23, 1993, La Barbera, Antonino Gioè and Salvatore Bentivegna were arrested in Milan. The police taped them while they were planning bomb attacks.