ITALY: Beautiful Lightning

A Roman matron last week overheard her young son’s evening prayer. “God bless mother & father,” recited the tot, adding on his own, “and save Giuliano from the police.”

Salvatore Giuliano is probably the world’s most eminent bandit, and certainly the most photogenic (see cut). In the rugged, wind-torn Montelepre zone that stretches behind Sicily’s lush Palermo plain, Giuliano has carved out his realm. In six years, the police say, he and his band have killed more than 200 people, kidnaped scores of wealthy latifondisti (rich landowners) and made an estimated $2,000,000 in ransom. Time & again, the Italian government has sent entire companies of carabinieri to capture him. Each time the hills above Montelepre and the undernourished, goatskin-gaitered Montelepre peasants have refused to give him up. Hundreds have been arrested for aiding or sheltering him, but, to most Sicilians, as to most little Roman boys, Giuliano is still a hero.

Shoes & Soap & Communists. Giuliano has been careful to build up a reputation as the friend of the common man. One of his earliest victims was Salvatore Abate, postmaster of Montelepre, Giuliano’s native village. The peasants complained that Abate stole money orders which relatives in America sent.them. One day, Giuliano strode into the post office and coolly bumped off Postmaster Abate, oppressor of the poor. The peasants complained about the prices Giuseppe Terranova charged for flour, shoes and soap, and the interest he charged on loans. Giuliano decided to enforce price control; he led Terranova into Montelepre’s piazza, read out a formal death sentence and shot him.

Officials and the rich are not Giuliano’s only prey; he also dislikes Communists. His gang has bombed C.P. headquarters in several towns. In 1947 he and his men attacked a May Day celebration on the Pian della Ginestra, killed eight and wounded 33. His argument against land reform is: “If it comes about, I will have to capture hundreds of peasants when I need money. Now all I need to do is capture a single baron and get all I want.”

Last May 17,000 police made an exhaustive beat of Giuliano’s mountain hideout. He slipped through the net (rumor said by joining a bicycle race that was passing through the area) and took a lonesome vacation in the mountain villages on the lower slopes, near Palermo. Police had already arrested his sisters Mariannina and Giuseppina; his mother is locked up on charges of extortion. The dragnet picked up several of his aides.

Deputies & Dukes. In mid-July Giuliano returned to his redoubt and wrote to the Palermo press, issuing an ultimatum to the police. Unless they released his relatives and friends within two weeks, he said, his gang would launch an offensive. The police did nothing. Scarcely a week after the fortnight’s expiration, Giuliano had captured five wealthy landowners, including the haughty Duke of Pratomeno and a deputy to the Sicilian Parliament. He demanded a ransom of 100 million lire apiece ($170,000).

On top of his kidnapings, Giuliano made a direct attack against the carabinieri in the dusty little hamlet of Bellolampo (Beautiful Lightning), only 20 minutes from Palermo. Luring the carabinieri out of their barracks, the bandits set off amine, blew up a truckload of 25. Seven died. When police officials rushed to the scene from Palermo, Giuliano’s men tossed a grenade at the officials’ car, swapped shots with them in a 15-minute fight.

The Bellolampo raid caused shrieks of rage in the Italian press. Communist papers featured a Tass dispatch calling Giuliano the tool of imperialistic foreign elements who wished to make the island a base for military operations. Minister of Interior Mario Scelba flew to Palermo and cleaned out the whole Montelepre police command. Himself a Sicilian, Scelba began a wholesale transfer from Montelepre of native Sicilians.

Police Dogs & Walkie-Talkies. To take charge of the campaign against Giuliano, Scelba announced the creation of a special force of 2,000 young carabinieri, all from mainland Italy, and all unmarried. At the head of the new command he placed Colonel Ugo Luca, a robust, taciturn ex-army officer who holds eight medals for valor. Luca planned to use tough paratroopers as ground assault troops, set up small, highly mobile units equipped with machine guns, walkie-talkies and police dogs. The Italian treasury appropriated one million lire a month for the special anti-bandit campaign.

Giuliano’s reaction to all the hubbub ran true to form. While the police prepared for the manhunt, his 20 or so men staged two more hit & run raids on police barracks, raising the total police and carabinieri killings attributed to them to an even 100. In a new letter to the Palermo press Giuliano proposed: “Let us give the judgment to the people of Sicily and have a poll. If the people condemn me, I promise that I will resign. But if the people want me, I want to follow my destiny.”