A MAFIA boss known as Il Macellaio (The Butcher), who claimed more than 100 killings is being allowed days out of prison as a reward for good behaviour after only eight years behind bars.

Giovanni Brusca, who was convicted in the 1992 bombing that killed Giovanni Falcone, the prominent anti-Mafia prosecutor, is allowed out for one week every forty-five days to visit his wife and son.

The revelation has caused outrage among relatives of victims of Mafia-related crimes. They criticised the benign regime afforded to a former “Godfather” of the Sicilian Mafia and a self- confessed multiple murderer.

Brusca’s crimes include the killing of Giuseppe Di Matteo, the 11-year-old son of a rival, whose body was dissolved in acid after he was held prisoner in a bunker for two years.

Roberto Castelli, the Justice Minister, has been urged to intervene amid claims from politicians on both the Left and the Right that the move will further undermine faith in Italian justice.

Brusca’s arrest in May 1996 was a key part of the crackdown on organised crime that began after the murder of Signor Falcone, his wife and three bodyguards.

Brusca, a podgy, bearded and unkempt gangster known also in Mafia circles as Il Porco (The Pig), rose to Godfather status at the age of 39, succeeding Salvatore (Toto) Riina, his mentor, who was arrested in 1993. Both were convicted of masterminding the 1992 murder of Signor Falcone.

In court Brusca admitted detonating the bomb, planted under the motorway from Palermo to the airport, by remote control while watching the judge’s convoy through binoculars from a hill.

He is also serving a life sentence for the murder of a Sicilian tax inspector. In 1999 he boasted to an interviewer in prison that he had committed “at least 100” murders.

Prison authorities disclosed yesterday that Brusca had been allowed to spend time with his family since Easter because of “good behaviour”. Officials said that in prison he had provided information about the Mafia as a pentito, or supergrass, and one of his life sentences had been reduced to 26 years because of his “collaboration”.

Alfredo Morvillo, assistant prosecutor in Palermo, and Judge Falcone’s brother-in-law, said that the authorities were merely applying the law and “emotion must be put aside”. Luigi Li Gotti, Brusca’s lawyer, hoped to persuade the authorities to change Brusca’s jail sentence to house arrest.

Maria Falcone, Judge Falcone’s sister, said that she was shocked and angry. “Every time something like this happens, the pain returns,” she said. She agreed with granting concessions to pentiti, but rules had to be applied “with some sense of decency. He should have got 100 life sentences.” It was “hardly surprising that people are losing faith in Italian justice”.

Bruno Berardi, head of Domus Civitas, the Italian association for the families of victims of Mafia violence and terrorism, said that the move was “only the latest evidence of leniency towards hardened Mafia criminals. Why should anyone think it is worth being an honest citizen after this?” Raffaele Costa, a deputy for Forza Italia, the party led by Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, said that the decision was “difficult for ordinary people to understand”.

Roberto Centaro, another Forza Italia deputy and head of the Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission, called it “inexplicable and disconcerting”.

Brusca was arrested at the villa he shared with his wife, Cristina, their son, Davide — then 5 — and his younger brother Enzo. Enzo Brusca, who had held Giuseppe Di Matteo’s legs in a vice while the boy was strangled, was jailed for 21 years, but a year ago this was commuted to house arrest.

According to the Interior Ministry, 1,110 former mafiosi have been given state protection as informers, 1,074 of them men and 36 women.

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