Member of the Corleonese clan, he had taken part in the organization of the 1992 bomb attacks against the Falcone and Borsellino judges. 60 years old, he was arrested in a Palermo clinic, where he was treated for cancer under a false identity.
by Allan Kaval (Rome, correspondent) and Thomas Saintourens
He was the last of the big names in the Cosa Nostra to have escaped Italian justice. His thirty -year run ended in late Monday, January 16 in the morning, in the premises of the Private Clinic Maddalena, in Palermo. With it, it is a chapter in the history of organized Sicilian organized crime which ended, as well as an entire cycle of Italian history. Sick, Matteo Messina Denaro, 60, was arrested at the very place where he had been following chemotherapy sessions for a year, under the identity of Andrea Bonafede, surveyor of his state. It is there, not far from the historic center of the big Sicilian city and 650 meters from the premises of the Palermitian management of antimafia surveys, that the men of the raggruppamento operativo specialo (ROS) of the carabiniers found it.
Until Monday, we only knew of him the face of a thirties flambe, photographed before his long, underground started in 1993. His image of legendary “boss” has just experienced a brutal transformation, taking the form With a weakened silhouette, wrapped in a winter jacket and framed by men in uniform, slowly descending the steps of a hospital to disappear in a police vehicle.
The name of Messina Denaro was associated with the Corleonese clan, this current of the Sicilian mafia which, after having triumphed its opponents on the island, had declared war in the Italian Republic in the early 1990s. Under the Commandment of Salvatore Riina, the mentor of Messina Denaro, the Corleonese had then taken the direction of a deadly terrorist violence against state targets.
So thirties, Messina Denaro had also taken part in the organization of the 1992 bomb attacks against the judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, for which he was sentenced to life perpetuity in 2020. His involvement In the attacks that left a dozen deaths in Florence, Rome and Milan in 1993 is also known. And yet, the mafia chief had managed, thanks to powerful supports, spending three decades under radars, decades during which he was able to develop the grip of organized Sicilian crime on the legal economy.
“Among the worst misdeeds of the history of Italy”
“This man has accomplished among the worst misdeeds in the history of Italy. He is the custodian of the greatest secrets of Cosa Nostra, explains Antonio Balsamo, the president of the court of Palermo. His testimony would make it possible to shed light On crucial episodes of the history of the mafia, and Italy. “The magistrate confides that the atmosphere of the last months was optimistic among the investigators, but that he himself was not aware of The capture operation, launched in a dazzling way, in the greatest discretion.
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