The Mafia and Italian politics

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service.Our guest is Dr Elisabeth Fondren, Associate Professor of Journalism at St John's University in New York, USA.We start by hearing some groundbreaking frontline reporting from the B ...  Show more

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History episodes focussing on Kenya.We hear about Muthoni Kirima, one of the last Mau Mau fighters to come out of hiding and lay down her arms.Caroline Elkins, Professor of History at Harvard University, discusses the brutal ...  Show more

Prosecutor Gian Carlo Caselli explains how leading Italian politician Giulio Andreotti was put on trial in Sicily in September 1995, accused of collusion with the Mafia. Andreotti had been prime minister seven times and journalists dubbed it the trial of the century. Bob Howard h ...  Show more

The "Maxi Trial" pitted two fearless Palermo prosecutors and turncoat "Pentiti" against the Cosa Nostra, its thuggish leader Toto Riina, and a whole host of corrupt cops, politicians and businessmen. But when the judge handed down 344 guilty verdicts, the real chaos was just begi ...  Show more

When Roberto Calvi's body was found swinging from a London bridge in 1982 it sent shockwaves through the religious, financial and criminal worlds. But who killed him? And how are the Vatican, Italy's powerful Mafia, a secret society called P2 and a Pope's death all linked in this ...  Show more

Today the ‘Ndrangheta, Calabria’s clan-based Mafia, is one of the world’s richest and most powerful drug trafficking organizations, worth an estimated $55 billion. But it wasn’t always like that. From the 1960s, as European politics went mad, the group glommed onto a new fad taki ...  Show more