Who is Salvatore Baiardo, the former handyman of the Graviano brothers, guest at Non è l’Arena

Who is Salvatore Baiardo, the former handyman of the Graviano brothers, guest at Non è l’Arena

Who is Salvatore Baiardo, the former handyman of the Graviano brothers who has been a frequent guest on Non è l’Arena on La7? Baiardo returned to being talked about on the occasion of the arrest of Matteo Messina Denaro since a few weeks earlier he had “forecast” almost everything in a chat with Giletti.

Subsequently, in another speech at Non è l’Arena, Baiardo said that the last of the Corleonesi is about to die and that the conductor of La7, by making him speak, “is risking a lot”. Yet there are many doubts about the validity of his statements. And above all on the real goal of him. The former magistrate and senator of the 5 Star Movement Roberto Scarpinato said that he is the spokesman for the mafia: “he speaks on TV and announces that Matteo Messina Denaro will be arrested. And yet he stays where he was. There is something wrong”.

Another former judge, Giancarlo Caselli, pointed out to Fatto Quotidiano how Baiardo speaks in a strangely minimizing way of the crimes of Filippo and Giuseppe Graviano. His thesis for the two to life imprisonment for various Mafia crimes is that they are “good guys who maybe did some stupid things when they were young. But then they wanted to change their lives by moving to the North. So much so that in 1994 they were arrested in Milan”.

But this, recalls the former magistrate, contrasts with all the reconstructions of the war years between Cosa Nostra and the state. Gaspare Spatuzza, former killer of Brancaccio and collaborator with justice, recalls meeting Graviano on the run in the Doney bar in Rome a few days before the attack on the Olympic stadium. At the time Graviano told Spatuzza that it was necessary to carry out the attack against the carabinieri in the stadium because “the coup de grace” had to be given. And “he had a joyful air”. Because he said “that we had achieved everything we were looking for thanks to serious people who had carried it forward”, so “we had put the country in our hands”.

In his last appearance at Non è l’Arena, Salvatore Baiardo also said that in 1992 or 1993 he had seen a copy of Paolo Borsellino’s red diary. And he said he wanted to sue those who called him “repentant”. Lirio Abbate spoke about Baiardo in Repubblica, emphasizing that he is a cousin of Cesare Lupo, front name of the Palermo bosses. And he has always been on the side of Totò Riina’s loyalists. So much so that, to cover them up, he made false or reticent statements to the judges. While his activity on TV, according to the investigative journalist, seems to be a game to be played in favor of the Gravianos. Abbate finally compared Baiardo to the figure of Massimo Ciancimino. The son of the former mayor of Palermo told the magistrates mixtures of true and false things. And in the end he ended up in prison for slander.