June 4 2000

Scourge of the mafia is left to fight alone

John Follain, Rome

AS head of the ROS, Italy’s elite anti-mafia snatch squad, (name xxxxxxx) can claim credit for putting some of the country’s most feared mobsters behind bars.

However, in a move that has raised fresh doubts over the determination of the authorities to fight organised crime, (name xxxxxx), previously known only by his codename of Major Ultimo (Last), has resigned, attacking his bosses for failing to back his methods and putting less experienced colleagues in danger.

Carla del Ponte, chief justice at the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague, has proposed that Ultimo , 36, should put his talents to helping Nato track down Balkan war criminals such as Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb warlord.

However, the carabinieri have blocked him from moving and Ultimo  is feeling vulnerable. His accusations have touched a nerve in the hierarchy of the paramilitary police force - which took the unprecedented step of naming him in its reply to the resignation letter that he leaked to newspaper editors.

“I have felt scared. But now I feel alone,” Ultimo  said in a rare interview last week as he broke his cover among joggers in a Rome park, with armed colleagues in plain clothes tailing him. “If I’m given a desk job in Rome, I’ll be more in danger there than I was hiding in Palermo.”

For security reasons, no picture of him has appeared in an Italian newspaper since he took up his job; this time he again refused to be photographed.

Ultimo ’s exploits are the stuff of legend: in Sicily, he once crept into the bedroom of a mafioso to place a bug under the bed as the mobster snored above. “My heart was beating so loudly I thought it would wake him,” he said. On another occasion, he awaited his prey while locked for hours in a trunk.

His greatest coup, however, was the capture in 1993 of Salvatore “The Beast” Riina, one of Italy’s most notorious mafia bosses. It inspired a television series based on Ultimo ’s life, entitled Ultimo, and earned him a place on the mob’s most wanted list.

Ultimo  said the past two years had convinced him that the carabinieri and judiciary were not devoting enough resources to the problem. The wave of popular support that followed the jailing of Riina saw hundreds of mobsters imprisoned. Recently the evidence of informers has been discredited and new limits on the length of preliminary investigations and custody have hampered procedures.

The policeman, who takes home just £900 a month, has fought a lonely battle against the mob, flitting from bunker to bunker and never seeing his wife and children.

In the wake of his resignation he has lost friends fast. Only one Sicilian magistrate has backed him, while an ominous silence has descended over the rest of a judiciary still haunted by the death of his mentor, Judge Giovanni Falcone, whose car was blown to pieces in May 1992.

Ultimo  has one regret: “I wasn’t given the means to find the new mafia overlord, Bernardo Provenzano. I know just how he thinks.”

Named “The Tractor” because of his brutality, Provenzano, 67, is wanted for 40 murders.

He has been on the run since 1963 - the year before Ultimo  was born.