A mafia turncoat has revealed for the first time that Sicily's Cosa Nostra was a pioneer in the use of killer drones, testing bomb-loaded remote controlled aircraft in the early 1990s.
Two decades before the US began using Reaper drones to strike terrorist targets in the Middle East, mobsters in Palermo were testing ways to rain death on rivals from the sky, former mafioso Gaspare Spatuzza told a court on Tuesday.
Spatuzza said he was ordered by one of the Graviano brothers - two senior Palermo bosses in the 1990s - to buy and flight test radio controlled aircraft with explosives attached.
"Graviano ordered me to buy a radio controlled aircraft," he said. "He said others had already bought them and we needed to carry out tests for transforming them into flying bombs by loading them with explosives."
Spatuzza said he had spent around 500 euros on the aircraft. "I carried out some tests," he said. "We needed to learn how to pilot it and steer it towards targets, loading it with a modest amount of explosives." He did not say if the aircraft was used in an attack.
Spatuzza's claims mark the first time a Sicilian mobster has revealed Cosa Nostra's aim of using remote controlled aircraft for murder. His testing of the rudimentary drones came as the mafia was becoming ever more sophisticated in its use of radio-detonated explosives in the 1990s.
In 1992, Costa Nostra packed half a ton of explosives underneath the motorway linking Palermo with its airport, detonating it by remote control as anti-mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone drove past. The blast, which registered on local earthquake sensors, killed Falcone, his wife and three police officers.
Before the attack, mobsters carefully tested how to time explosions to hit moving cars and set off a test explosion on a concrete structure to check if they had enough explosives.
Weeks later, the mafia detonated a car bomb in Palermo, killing Falcone's fellow magistrate Paolo Borsellino. The following year, as the Italian government clamped down on Cosa Nostra, the Graviano brothers and Spatuzza were involved in series of bomb attacks on the Italian mainland, including a 1993 car bomb attack in Florence which destroyed paintings at the Uffizi Gallery.
Spatuzza, who was arrested in 1997 before deciding to give evidence against the mafia, was speaking on Tuesday at a new trial connected to Borsellino's murder. He has been convicted of 40 murders, but claims to have found God in prison, pushing him to give evidence against former fellow mobsters.
SEE ALSO: The X-47B drone ushers in a brave, scary new world >