Angelino Alfano

In a phone-tapped conversations the gang said they wanted Alfano to meet the same fate as John F. Kennedy, the US President assassinated in an open-top car in Dallas in 1963.

They also claimed the Sicilian Mafia was behind the murder of the American President; in fact a boss accused both Kennedy and Alfano of rising to power with Mafia support then dismissing the crime group.

Angelino Alfano (born 31 October 1970) is an Italian former politician who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 12 December 2016 to 1 June 2018.

Alfano was born in Agrigento, Sicily, on 31 October 1970; his father, Angelo Alfano, was a lawyer and local politician for the Christian Democracy, who also held the position of deputy mayor of Agrigento.

After receiving a law degree from Milan's Università Cattolica and a doctorate in Corporate law from the University of Palermo, Alfano started his political experience, as his father, with the Christian Democracy party.

After some years in the Christian Democracy party, in 1994, when DC changed his name in the centre-left oriented Italian People's Party, Alfano joined Forza Italia, the new centre-right party founded by the media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, and was elected to the Agrigento Province Council.

In 1996, Alfano was the youngest member elected to the Sicilian Regional Assembly.

In 2001, he became a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, after the victory of the centre-right House of Freedoms coalition led by Berlusconi in the 2001 general election.

It was widely criticised as a copy of the Lodo Schifani, declared unconstitutional in 2004, and was seen by critics as an ad personam law aimed primarily at stopping trials involving Berlusconi.

From 2005 to 2008 he also held the position of regional coordinator in Sicily of the Forza Italia party.

After the 2008 elections victory by the Berlusconi-led centre-right coalition, Alfano was again elected to Parliament.

In May 2008, aged 37, he became the youngest Minister of Justice in the history of the Italian Republic.

The so-called Lodo Alfano, named after him, was a piece of legislation in force between 2008 and 2009 that granted immunity from prosecution to the four highest political offices in Italy (President of the Republic, Presidents of the two Houses of Parliament, and Prime Minister).

The Lodo Alfano was declared unconstitutional by the Italian Constitutional Court in October 2009.

He was the first and only secretary of the centre-right party The People of Freedom (PdL) from 2011 to 2013.

In 2011 the People of Freedom lost both local elections in Milan and Naples, suffered a defeat at the 2011 referendums and a group of parliamentarians, close to Gianfranco Fini, left the party in opposition to Berlusconi's policies and founded the Future and Freedom movement.

On 1 June 2011 Angelino Alfano was appointed Political Secretary of the People of Freedom by party President Silvio Berlusconi in order to reorganise and lead it in the next election.

He was later elected to that post by the 1 July meeting of the party's National Council.

Alfano was Minister of the Interior from 28 April 2013 to 12 December 2016, serving in the governments of Matteo Renzi and Enrico Letta; from 2013 to 2014 he held the office of Deputy Prime Minister of Italy, as part of the Letta Cabinet, and previously served as Minister of Justice from 2008 to 2011 as part of the Berlusconi IV Cabinet.

In November 2013 he became Leader of the New Centre-Right party which is a split from the PdL, until March 2017 when NCD was dissolved and Popular Alternative was founded.

Alfano is the first Italian politician to have held the offices of Minister of Justice, Minister of the Interior, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, which are considered among the most important ministries in the Cabinet of Italy.

On 24 April 2013, the Vice-Secretary of the Democratic Party, Enrico Letta, was invited to form a government by President Giorgio Napolitano, after the resignation of Pier Luigi Bersani following weeks of political deadlock after the 2013 general election.

On 27 April Letta formally accepted the task of leading a grand coalition government with support from the centre-left Democratic Party, the centre-right People of Freedom, and the centrist Civic Choice.

The government became the first in the history of the Italian Republic to include representatives of all the major candidate-coalitions that had competed in the election.

While Berlusconi himself refused to participate in the government, his aide Alfano, as Secretary of the PdL, became Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior.

On 19 July 2013, the Italian Senate voted a confidence vote on Alfano, promoted by Five Star Movement and Left Ecology Freedom, after the expulsion from Italy of the wife and the daughter of Mukhtar Ablyazov, a Kazakh dissident, approved by Alfano.

After the vote Alfano was confirmed as minister.

In November 2013, Alfano broke with his mentor Berlusconi: He and other People of Freedom ministers, known as "doves", were strong supporters of Enrico Letta's government and refused to join the new Forza Italia (FI), founded upon the dissolution of the PdL by Berlusconi.

All five PdL ministers, three under-secretaries, 30 senators and 27 deputies immediately joined a new party called New Centre-Right under Alfano's leadership.

Most were Christian democrats and many came from the southern regions of Calabria and Sicily.

On 13 February 2014, following his loss in a leadership election against Matteo Renzi, the new Secretary of the Democratic Party, Letta announced he would resign as Prime Minister the following day.

On 22 February Renzi was sworn in as Prime Minister and Alfano was confirmed as Interior Minister.

A major problem Alfano has faced, as Interior Minister, is illegal immigration to Italy, which emerged as a result of the Libyan and Syrian civil wars.

On 8 August 2014, the Italian Cabinet approved a law-decree contrasting the phenomenon of lawlessness and violence at sporting events and provided for the international protection of migrants.

In November 2014, the Italian-run rescue option Operation Mare Nostrum was replaced by Frontex's Operation Triton, due to the refusal by several EU governments to fund it.

On 19 April 2015, a huge shipwreck took place in the Mediterranean Sea, causing the death of more than 700 migrants from North Africa.

In November 2015 six Sicilian Mafia bosses, close to Totò Riina, were arrested for allegedly planning the assassination of Alfano.

On 7 December 2016, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi announced his resignation, following the rejection of his proposals to overhaul the Italian Senate in the 2016 Italian constitutional referendum.

A few days later, on 11 December 2016, the Foreign Affairs Minister Paolo Gentiloni was asked by President Mattarella to form a new government.

On the following day Gentiloni was officially sworn in as the new head of the government.