Antonio Balsamo

Antonio Balsamo was born in Palermo, and is a Judicial Advisor for the Per- manent Italian Mission to the United Nations in Wien. In addition, he is also a judge at Supreme Court of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, and a professor of Criminal Law at the School of Law of the LUMSA Uni- versity. He joined the judiciary in 1991. From September 2011 to March 2018, he was the president of the Assize Court in Caltanissetta, where he handled the trials on the Capaci massacre – in which judge Giovanni Falcone was killed - and the Via D’Amelio manslaughter – in which judge Paolo Borsellino was murdered - whose first-degree final verdicts were lodged on October 4, 2017 (the so-called Capaci bis trial) and on June 30, 2018 (the so-called Borsellino quater trial). Having taken into account newer evidence, these two trials allowed shedding light on the background and reasons that brought to the two massacres, the mafia decision-making process and the practical execution in 1992. The verdicts demonstrated that at the time the Sicilian mafia was implementing a terroristic strategy, attempting to create a climate of fear aimed at inducing the Italian Institutions to surrender. Furthermore, the trials showed that, after the Via D’Amelio massacre, one of the biggest attempts in the Italian judicial history was put in place to throw the enquiry off the track. From March 2016 to March 2018 he was a Deputy Public Prosecutor at the Court of Cassation, where he was involved in many trials on terrorism, organized crime, corruption, also intervening on the opportunity to legally resort to the new forms of wiretapping now possible thanks to the new techno- logies. Previously – from 1995 to 2007 – he worked as a judge at the Tribunal of Palermo, where he handled – among others - the case against Senator Giulio Andreotti (who had been charged with participation in mafia conspiracy), as well as the trial for the murder of legal reporter Mario Francese (who had been killed by the mafia for his brave probes into criminal affairs and his ar- ticles on the public contracts for the construction of the Garcia dam). From May 2010 to May 2012, he was the President of the EULEX Kosovo’s Human Rights Review Panel, i.e. the largest civil mission promoted by the European Union within the European Safety and Defence Policy framework with the aim to assist and support Kosovo’s Institutions in their effort to build a constitutional state. He also is an advisor for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and participated in several international projects in Albania, Bosnia-Herze- govina, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Moldavia, Montenegro, and other countries. He authored many publications on Law and Criminal Procedure, Inter- national Criminal Law, protection of human rights, and contributed to the publication of Giurisprudenza europea e processo penale italiano, a book on European laws and Italian criminal trials by Balsamo and Kostoris, pu- blished by Giappichelli in 2008.

Reasons for assigning the Award

The 2018 Vissi d’Arte - Città di Alcamo International Culture Award has been bestowed on Antonio Balsamo, in consideration of our gratitude to him for having always pursued and guaranteed a constant and steady defence of the democratic principles of our Republic. Particularly focusing on the oppo- sition to organized crime and corruption, his intense activities promoted the fight against criminality, the preservation of the ethics of social responsibility, as well as people’s rights. Furthermore, he has transmitted to the younger generations his interest and passion for the quest for the truth, guided by an enormous trust in the youth as our hope for the future. Recently, he started to collaborate with International Organizations as an advisor for projects on the battle against cross-border crime and on the safeguard of the human rights.

Conferimento Premio Internazionale per la Cultura "Vissi d'Arte Città di Alcamo"