Mafia Scotched

Twelve harassed Sicilians wrangled for 72 hours, last week at Termini Imerese, weighing the testimony of 500 witnesses, digesting a judge's charge which covered 6,000 legal points. The jurors finally delivered a blanket verdict: "Guilty."

Soon prison sentences totaling more than 2,000 years were imposed upon 147 culprits. All had been leading members of the dread, famed Mafia, a bandit gang once more potent in Sicily than the Italian Government. Seven of the condemned were sentenced to life imprisonment, others to sentences scaling down from 30 to 3 years. At Rome, the Fascist press triumphantly proclaimed that Il Duce has redeemed his pledge to exterminate the Mafia (TIME, Oct. 24).

Italian correspondents, impressionable, reported that their blood "ran cold'' as they watched a notorious "Mafia Queen," Giuseppa Salvo, 62, receive her 25-year sentence "with a sinister look and a ferocious leer."