House arrest was granted to Lucio Massimiliano Di Gangi, a 37-year-old from Mistretta arrested in recent weeks and confined in prison on charges of illegal possession of weapons of war. The appeal proposed by the man’s defense lawyers, Liborio Porracciolo and Lucio Di Salvo, was partially accepted by the Court of Review, with the replacement of the precautionary measure subject to the application of the electronic bracelet and a ban on communication with the outside world. The man was arrested red-handed by the carabinieri of the local Company who found, hidden in a plot of land in the Medda district in his availability, a real arsenal consisting in particular of 13 45 caliber grenades from Brixia mortar mod. 1935, commonly known as the “red devil”, complete with fuzes, 98 30 caliber carbine cartridges, 2 44 caliber cartridges, as well as 1,637 complete 6.5 x 52 mm caliber cartridges, of which 335 contained within 19 submachine gun plates.
Patti’s investigating judge Andrea La Spada ordered her custody in prison following the validation hearing at the request of the public prosecutor Salvatore Nucera, holder of the file coordinated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office led by the acting prosecutor Andrea Apollonio. The defenders disputed various investigative findings underlying the provision, from the actual availability of the land in the name of a third party, although the subject of a preliminary sale that was never concluded, in which Di Gangi reported having found himself for grazing reasons, to the discovery within the nearby family business of a hydraulic pipe similar to those used to hide the grenades.
What arouses particular outcry are the references in the same ordinance to the relationships that have existed over time between the parents of the suspect, in particular the father, with the mafia family of Sebastiano and Pietro Rampulla, the former believed to be the head of the Mistrettese clan who died in prison in 2010, the latter definitively condemned as a “bomb disposal expert” of Capaci, and the passage which mentions the possibility of extracting “a fair quantity of TNT” from the seized grenades, evocative of the massacre.
“A family reference from over twenty years ago which concerns other subjects and an unverified technical suggestion on TNT”, contested the lawyers in the appeal to the Review, which ruled on the mitigation of the precautionary needs by granting the least distressing measure which the public prosecutor had opposed. Therefore, 360-degree investigations are underway into the accusatory approach which places Di Gangi, in collaboration with unidentified third parties, as custodian of the seized arsenal of “destructive power”.