Ayala, who said he had refused to receive it, was later criticized for saying escorts to anti-mafia judges should be reduced, despite evidence of further failed attempts to kill them in subsequent years.

[5] Normal procedure when Borsellino travelled was to clear the road of cars before his arrival, but this was not allowed by the administration of the comune of Palermo, as reported by another anti-mafia judge, Antonino Caponnetto.

[7] Borsellino used to carry a red notebook, the so-called agenda rossa, in which he wrote down details of his investigations before making an official record in judicial reports.

A video showing Arcangioli holding the agenda rossa while inspecting the bombing area was aired in news on Italian state channel Rai 1 in 2006.

[11] In July 2007, the prosecutor's office in Caltanissetta opened an investigation into the possible involvement of agents from SISDE, Italy's civil intelligence service, in the massacre.

Entitled 19 luglio 1992: Una strage di stato ("19 July 1992: A state massacre"), the letter supports the hypothesis that Minister of the Interior Mancino knew the reasons for the magistrate's assassination.

Mafia boss Totò Riina spoke about the presence of the Italian intelligence service on Monte Pellegrino on 22 May 2004, in the trial relating to the Via dei Georgofili bombing.

[15] In an interview on the Italian state TV documentary show La storia siamo noi (History is Us), Borsellino's widow said he, in the days before the massacre, had her close the shutters on the windows because "they can observe us from Castello Utveggio".

Among other things, the agreement would involve the creation of a new party, Forza Italia, with the help of founder Silvio Berlusconi's chief collaborator, Marcello Dell'Utri, who was later convicted of allegiance to the mafia.

[19] After the new revelations, Sicilian attorneys started new investigations based on the hypothesis that Borsellino knew of the negotiations between the mafia, SISDE and senior politicians, and that he was assassinated because of this knowledge.

[21] The prosecutor in Caltanissetta reopened investigations[22] after Gaspare Spatuzza, a Mafia killer who became a state witness (pentito) in 2008, admitted he stole the Fiat 126 used for the car bomb in the Via D’Amelio attack.

His admission contradicted the declarations of Vincenzo Scarantino, who had confessed earlier to stealing the car and whose testimony was the main evidence in previous trials.

[25][26][27] Spatuzza's assertions back up previous statements of the pentito Antonino Giuffrè, who said that the Graviano brothers were the intermediaries between Cosa Nostra and Berlusconi.

Cosa Nostra decided to back Berlusconi's Forza Italia party from its foundation in 1993, in exchange for help in resolving the Mafia's judicial problems.

The Mafia turned to Forza Italia when its traditional contacts in the discredited Christian Democrat party proved unable to protect its members from the rigours of the law.