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Act Daily News
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The arrest of Cosa Nostra mob boss Matteo Messina Denaro at a personal well being clinic in Palermo on Monday shocked many world wide because of the extraordinary size of time he’d been on the run – however got here as little shock for some who watched the Mafia extra carefully.
Whispers of his failing well being had been circulating in Sicily for months, with hints of a “deal” to carry him again to the floor to get higher most cancers care. When officers requested him his identify, he selected to not use his alias, Andrea Bonafede, Palermo prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia informed reporters.
“I am Matteo Messina Denaro,” he mentioned as a substitute – doubtless the primary time he had uttered these phrases in public within the 30 years he was on the run.
Messina Denaro, who’s being held in a maximum-security jail in L’Aquila in central Italy, didn’t seem by way of video hyperlink for a trial listening to Thursday – over the 1992 killings of anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino – leaving his lawyer to attend on his behalf.
Messina Denaro, nicknamed “Diabolik,” went into hiding in 1993, only a 12 months after Falcone and Borsellino died in twin bombings. He was given life sentences in absentia in May 2002 for his involvement of their deaths however, following his arrest, the case will now be heard in increased courts.
That 12 months he was additionally convicted of the homicide of 12-year-old Giuseppe Di Matteo, the son of a turncoat, and the homicide of Antonella Bonanno, the pregnant accomplice of a rival boss. Both of these instances can even be introduced earlier than increased courts now that he has been captured.
After his arrest, police discovered at the very least two hideouts within the Sicilian city of Campobello di Mazara the place he’s thought to have lived in latest months. Act Daily News affiliate SkyTG24 reported {that a} home the place he was hiding was within the coronary heart of the city, and that police had discovered luxurious clothes and costly perfumes there. The different was a fortified bunker behind a hidden door, in line with Reuters quoting native officers.
Further particulars have but to be launched by police. They did verify, nevertheless, that probably the most needed man in Italy commonly did his personal grocery purchasing, and neighbors described him as a “friendly” particular person.
On Thursday, Giovanni Luppino, an olive oil producer who allegedly drove him to the Palermo clinic the place he was arrested, informed a court docket that he had “no idea” the person who had develop into his good friend was actually the fugitive mob boss. Messina Denaro stays in jail pending a trial for alleged Mafia collusion. Police additionally positioned the medical doctors treating him below investigation.
The assassinations of Falcone and Borsellino had been ordered by the-then boss of bosses, Salvatore “Toto” Riina, who was arrested in 1993 and had introduced Messina Denaro into the Cosa Nostra Mafia group years earlier. Riina was caught on wiretaps expressing his admiration for the then-young prison, specifically how he had no drawback killing harmless bystanders fairly than simply specializing in vendettas.
Riina died within the jail wing of a hospital in Parma in 2017 of an unspecified well being situation, ending his reign definitively. He was in a medically induced coma on the time. Mario Francese, a criminal offense journalist who first uncovered Riina in his writing for the newspaper Giornale di Sicilia, was murdered in 1979. In 2001, the Cosa Nostra was discovered responsible of his homicide, with each Riina and his successor Bernardo Provenzano sentenced to life in jail for his or her position.
During his time in hiding, Messina Denaro labored carefully below Provenzano, who took over Riina’s position as the highest boss on the skin till his personal seize in 2006 in a hideout close to Corleone. Provenzano died of bladder most cancers within the jail wing of a Milan hospital in 2016, main the best way for Messina Denaro to be thought of the highest boss.
Felia Allum, professor of comparative organized crime and corruption on the UK’s University of Bath, mentioned Messina Denaro – who was born in 1962 – was the final of an previous era of Mafia bosses.
“He represents the final link between the belligerent and overt Cosa Nostra of the early 1990s and the silent, business-like Mafia of the 21st century,” she mentioned. She additionally underscores that the arrest of Messina Denaro isn’t the top of the Mafia. “I don’t see a sense of closure, if we don’t know who protected him, if he doesn’t cooperate,” she mentioned.
Rumors of a deal, or “pact,” between the state and the Cosa Nostra to carry Messina Denaro out of hiding are price consideration, in line with Roberto Saviano, writer of the best-selling e book “Gomorrah,” concerning the Neapolitan Camorra crime group.
“It is always said that the Mafia is the anti-state, that is a mistake. The Mafia is allied with one part of the state, while another part is fighting it,” he mentioned, talking on his YouTube channel. “In this play of forces, Matteo Messina Denaro, was arrested.”
Saviano added in an change of textual content messages with Act Daily News that there was one more reason Messina Denaro took 30 years to seek out. “They only started looking for him after 20 years,” he mentioned.
John Dickie, professor of Italian Studies at Britain’s University College London and writer of “Cosa Nostra,” takes a distinct view, telling Act Daily News there was as a substitute so much to counsel no pact was made, however that as a substitute Messina Denaro now not held the ability he as soon as did, making him a much less worthwhile particular person to guard.
Over the previous decade, billions of property price billions of euros had been seized from his closest allies and members of the family had been seized, weakening his energy and his capability to be protected, he mentioned.
“His network has been pruned over the years and the Mafia has been weakened by arrests,” Dickie mentioned. “The Mafia was different 30 years ago, it was much stronger.”
By arresting most of Messina Denaro’s household and conserving the remaining below surveillance, it was doubtless they did residence in on him, he mentioned. “His importance is symbolic,” Dickie informed Act Daily News. “When he was hiding, he was a living advertisement for the power of the Cosa Nostra, but he didn’t have that power now.”
Whether it was the results of a pact or actually the fruit of three many years of investigation, the arrest was applauded by these damage most by the Mafia’s lethal hand.
Maria Falcone, the sister of the slain prosecutor, applauded the arrest of Messina Denaro. “Oh, how I wish Giovanni and Paolo could see the applause and raised hands of the people of Palermo after the arrest,” she informed Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera. “It is a big step towards a complete democracy.”
Giancarlo Caselli, a former anti-Mafia prosecutor in Palermo and colleague of the slain prosecutors, mentioned in an interview on Radio Popolare that the primary motive Messina Denaro escaped seize for thus lengthy was the complicity of those that protected him.
“Mafiosi do not operate in a vacuum. They are inside, intertwined with a system of relationships, of complicities, without which they could not carry out their criminal activities, without which they could not remain fugitives,” he mentioned.
“They are in relationships that involve professionals, entrepreneurs, public administrators, politicians, individuals who flank their organization and form the so-called Mafia bourgeoisie, or gray zone.” He mentioned it’s that grey zone, “the backbone of Mafia power,” with out which the Mafia wouldn’t survive as lengthy.
The Sicilian Cosa Nostra Mafia is the one one in all Italy’s prison organizations that guidelines by means of a pyramid construction, that means that when the highest boss dies or is imprisoned, a brand new high boss rises to energy – though Riina and Provenzano maintained some sway from behind bars.
The Neapolitan Camorra, factions of which based the Cosa Nostra within the 1800s, together with the ‘Ndrangheta in Calabria, rule on a horizontal hierarchy with teams tied to households or territories, that means if a high boss is captured or killed, the broader group isn’t weakened.
Sicilian Cosa Nostra mafiosi who emigrated to the United States within the late 1800s constructed the US Mafia primarily in New York and New Orleans at completely different moments of historical past, together with the early 1900s, the mid-Sixties and the early Nineteen Seventies when the American teams had been strongest. While at the moment all of Italy’s main crime teams have expanded internationally, the Cosa Nostra stays the unique exporter of the so-called “malavita” underworld.
Messina Denaro will now face a sequence of prison trials. Though he was tried in absentia on numerous expenses, Italian prison instances all cross by means of three ranges, ending with the excessive court docket signing off. Criminals can solely be tried in absentia within the first diploma, that means his instances will now cross by means of appellate and excessive court docket trials.
He can be represented by his niece Lorenza Guttadauro, the daughter of his sister Rosalia, who handed the Italian equal of the bar examination in 2011. The subsequent listening to within the anti-Mafia prosecutors case is scheduled for March 9.
And who’s the brand new boss of bosses? Police haven’t named any suspected successor.
But in Saviano’s opinion, Messina Denaro will nonetheless rule till he dies, like Riina and Provenzano earlier than him.
“Unless he decides to repent, Matteo Messina Denaro, even locked up, will continue to be the king of the Cosa Nostra because no one is ready to sit on the throne that he left only half-empty,” he mentioned.