Sicilian judge Antonino Di Matteo is one of the most threatened - and protected - men in Italy.As the chief prosecutor in Italy's 'trial of the century', he has more than 20 bodyguards, ensuring his safety around the clock.On trial are 10 men who stand accused of being part of a conspiracy between the mafia and the state. Five of the defendants are mafia bosses and five are members of the political establishment, including senior police chiefs and politicians.Central to Di Matteo's case is the story of Italy's most famous anti-mafia judges, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.During the 1980s they prosecuted hundreds of Cosa Nostra members in what was known as the Maxi Trial, the largest mafia court case in history. Four-hundred-and-seventy-five mafiosi were brought to court and 346 were found guilty.'For over 130 years in Italy we pretended the mafia didn't exist. Not until Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino did we have magistrates in Sicily who said, 'No. The mafia in Italy exists. The mafia in Sicily exists. And it's the judiciary's duty to fight and try to destroy the mafia',' says Saverio Lodato, author of Forty Years of Mafia.The Cosa Nostra 'boss of bosses', Salvatore 'Toto' Riina, had been tried in absentia and sentenced to life in prison. After the trial, Riina allegedly sought revenge.Judge Giovanni Falcone was assassinated on May 23, 1992 near the mafia heartland of Palermo. Two months later, while investigating Falcone's murder, Judge Paolo Borsellino was also killed by a massive car bomb in Via D'Amelio, a residential street in Palermo.Inspired by these two judges, Di Matteo is now taking up where they left off. He is trying to shine a light on Italy's so-called season of terror from 1991 to 1994, when the mafia organised a series of bombings and murders to force a negotiation with the government.'I was brought up with the legend of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. I was a law student when they were working on the Maxi Trial. In those men ...
