Rome
CNN
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The arrest of Cosa Nostra mob boss Matteo Messina Denaro at a non-public well being health facility in Palermo on Monday shocked many all over the world because of the odd duration of time he’d been at the run – however got here as little wonder for some who watched the Mafia extra intently.
Whispers of his failing well being were circulating in Sicily for months, with hints of a “deal” to carry him again to the skin to recover most cancers care. When officials requested him his title, he selected to not use his alias, Andrea Bonafede, Palermo prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia instructed newshounds.
“I am Matteo Messina Denaro,” he mentioned as a substitute – most likely the primary time he had uttered the ones phrases in public within the 30 years he used to be at the run.
Messina Denaro, who’s being held in a maximum-security jail in L’Aquila in central Italy, didn’t seem by means of video hyperlink for a tribulation listening to Thursday – over the 1992 killings of anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino – leaving his legal professional to wait on his behalf.
Messina Denaro, nicknamed “Diabolik,” went into hiding in 1993, only a yr after Falcone and Borsellino died in dual bombings. He used to be given lifestyles sentences in absentia in May 2002 for his involvement of their deaths however, following his arrest, the case will now be heard in upper courts.
That yr he used to be 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 spouse of a rival boss. Both of the ones circumstances may also be introduced prior to upper courts now that he has been captured.
After his arrest, police discovered no less than two hideouts within the Sicilian the town of Campobello di Mazara the place he’s idea to have lived in contemporary months. CNN associate SkyTG24 reported {that a} space the place he used to be hiding used to be within the center of the city, and that police had discovered luxurious clothes and costly perfumes there. The different used to be a fortified bunker at the back of a hidden door, in line with Reuters quoting native officers.
Further main points have not begun to be launched via police. They did ascertain, on the other hand, that essentially the most sought after guy in Italy incessantly did his personal grocery buying groceries, and neighbors described him as a “friendly” individual.
On Thursday, Giovanni Luppino, an olive oil manufacturer who allegedly drove him to the Palermo health facility the place he used to be arrested, instructed a court docket that he had “no idea” the person who had turn out to be his good friend used to be truly the fugitive mob boss. Messina Denaro stays in prison pending a tribulation for alleged Mafia collusion. Police additionally positioned the medical doctors treating him beneath investigation.
The assassinations of Falcone and Borsellino had been ordered via the-then boss of bosses, Salvatore “Toto” Riina, who used to be arrested in 1993 and had introduced Messina Denaro into the Cosa Nostra Mafia group years previous. Riina used to be stuck on wiretaps expressing his admiration for the then-young prison, specifically how he had no drawback killing blameless bystanders slightly than simply specializing in vendettas.
Riina died within the jail wing of a health center in Parma in 2017 of an unspecified well being factor, finishing his reign definitively. He used to be in a medically brought on coma on the time. Mario Francese, against the law journalist who first uncovered Riina in his writing for the newspaper Giornale di Sicilia, used to be murdered in 1979. In 2001, the Cosa Nostra used to be discovered in charge of his homicide, with each Riina and his successor Bernardo Provenzano sentenced to lifestyles in jail for his or her position.
During his time in hiding, Messina Denaro labored intently beneath Provenzano, who took over Riina’s position as the highest boss at the out of doors 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 health center in 2016, main the best way for Messina Denaro to be regarded as the highest boss.
Felia Allum, professor of comparative arranged crime and corruption at the United Kingdom’s University of Bath, mentioned Messina Denaro – who used to be born in 1962 – used to be the final of an previous technology 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 value attention, in line with Roberto Saviano, writer of the best-selling e-book “Gomorrah,” in regards to the Neapolitan Camorra crime workforce.
“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 trade of textual content messages with CNN that there used to be 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 CNN there used to be as a substitute so much to signify no pact used to be made, however that as a substitute Messina Denaro not held the ability he as soon as did, making him a much less precious individual to offer protection to.
Over the previous decade, billions of property value billions of euros were seized from his closest allies and members of the family were seized, weakening his energy and his skill to be safe, 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 maximum of Messina Denaro’s circle of relatives and retaining the remaining beneath surveillance, it used to be most likely they did house in on him, he mentioned. “His importance is symbolic,” Dickie instructed CNN. “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 used to be the results of a pact or in reality the fruit of 3 a long time of investigation, the arrest used to be applauded via the ones harm maximum via the Mafia’s fatal 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 instructed 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 principle explanation why Messina Denaro escaped seize for goodbye used to be the complicity of those that safe 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 would no longer continue to exist as lengthy.
The Sicilian Cosa Nostra Mafia is the one one in all Italy’s prison organizations that laws via a pyramid construction, which means that after the highest boss dies or is imprisoned, a brand new most sensible boss rises to energy – despite the fact that Riina and Provenzano maintained some sway from at the back of bars.
The Neapolitan Camorra, factions of which based the Cosa Nostra within the 1800s, in conjunction with the ‘Ndrangheta in Calabria, rule on a horizontal hierarchy with teams tied to households or territories, which means if a most sensible boss is captured or killed, the broader group isn’t weakened.
Sicilian Cosa Nostra mafiosi who emigrated to the United States within the overdue 1800s constructed the United States Mafia basically in New York and New Orleans at other moments of historical past, together with the early 1900s, the mid-Sixties and the early Nineteen Seventies when the American teams had been most powerful. While lately all of Italy’s main crime teams have expanded the world over, 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 used to be attempted in absentia on a lot of fees, Italian prison circumstances all move via 3 ranges, finishing with the prime court docket signing off. Criminals can simplest be attempted in absentia within the first level, which means his circumstances will now move via appellate and prime court docket trials.
He will likely be represented via his niece Lorenza Guttadauro, the daughter of his sister Rosalia, who handed the Italian an identical 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 have no longer named any suspected successor.
But in Saviano’s opinion, Messina Denaro will nonetheless rule till he dies, like Riina and Provenzano prior to 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.
