Lirio Abbate

Who is Lirio Abbate?

Lirio Abbate is an Italian journalist and a correspondent in Sicily for the state news agency ANSA and La Stampa newspaper.

He was born in Castelbuono in the province of Palermo and started his journalistic career in 1990 at the Giornale di Sicilia until 1997 when he moved to ANSA. In 1998 he also started to work for La Stampa. In 2003 he was elected journalist of the year by Unione Nazionale Cronisti. He reported on the Mafia and clandestine immigration on the Sicilian coast. He was the only journalist present at the arrest in April 2006 of the "boss of bosses" of Cosa Nostra, Bernardo Provenzano, who was jailed after 43 years on the run.

Abbate angered the Mafia with a book published in 2007 with colleague Peter Gomez called I Complici about links between politicians and Bernardo Provenzano. When over police wiretaps heard mafiosi were heard discussing how to silence Abbate in revenge for his news reports and book, police decided to give him and his wife a police escort.

On the night of September 2, 2007, his police bodyguards surprised two men placing a home-made bomb under his car.