UNITED KINGDOM
Catholic Herald
By Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith on Friday, 19 October 2012
Readers with long memories may recall the case of Salvatore Riina, the Sicilian mafia boss of all bosses. Mr Riina was on the run from the police for twenty-three years but was finally arrested in January 1993. I was living in Italy at the time, and the capture of Riina was hailed as a great success in the fight against crime. The fact that he had evaded capture for so long had been emblematic of the Italian state’s helplessness in the face of the Mafia.
Riina’s arrest probably did mark a turning point in the battle against the mafia in Sicily. But questions remain to this day. Riina was not on the run or in hiding in the usual sense of the word. There were no recent photos of him, so no one knew what he looked like, but he was living normally at home in Palermo, not in some mountain hideout, nor moving from place to place. He was, as they say, hiding in plain view. And it has often been assumed that he was able to do this with the connivance of the authorities: in other words, Riina had significant backing from politicians in Rome. …
There are one or two facts about the Soper case that make you wonder. He was interviewed by police in England, but the police did not photograph him, and they did not confiscate his passport There are no recent photographs of him ( a bit like Salvatore Riina) and there is also confusion about his age: it seems that he is 68, but other sources mention him being in his eighties. If he is living quietly in Italy, this raises important questions. Has he a bank account in his own name? Is he living under an alias, and if so, how did he acquire it? Who is helping him? Or has he been able to disappear relying purely on his own cunning? This seems doubtful: you cannot do anything in Italy without an identity card or passport. You cannot have someone to stay in your house for more than three nights without advising the police of it. There are numerous rules and regulations, all of which were flouted by Riina, but which Soper might find harder to avoid.
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