In the Land of the Mafia

Spiegel Online examines how Sicily became ungovernable. An excerpt:

Sicily is Mafia country, and no one is more aware of this than Nino Di Matteo. The 56-year-old public prosecutor is Italy's most endangered man. Because the Cosa Nostra wants to see him dead, Di Matteo has had around-the-clock protection for the last 23 years, with 42 officers working in shifts to provide his security in Palermo. With submachine guns over their shoulders, they follow Di Matteo wherever he goes. He also has bodyguards in Rome, where he was transferred in the summer, but he still spends his weekends in Sicily. And more importantly, he remains the prosecutor in a trial here intended to clarify the extent to which the government accommodated members of the Mafia in the 1990s, a case to which he is especially devoted.