- Fearless businesswoman who broke mafia code of silence to secretly record Sicilian mob boss Matteo Messina Den Daily Mail
- Sicilian mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro laid to rest with only close family members in attendance WION
- ‘The Devil’s tomb’ revealed as police seal off resting place of mafia boss who killed 50 The Mirror
- The Devil’s resting place: Tomb of Murderous Mafia boss who is said to have slaughtered 50 people as he avoide Daily Mail
- Video: Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro who bragged to have ‘killed enough people to fill a cemetery’ laid to rest CNN
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Tag Archives: Sicilian
After 30 years, Italy arrests mafia boss Messina Denaro at Sicilian hospital
PALERMO, Italy, Jan 16 (Reuters) – Italy’s most wanted mafia boss, Matteo Messina Denaro, was arrested by armed police at a private hospital in Sicily on Monday, where the man who has been on the run since 1993 was being treated for cancer.
Nicknamed “Diabolik” and “‘U Siccu” (The Skinny One), Messina Denaro had been sentenced in absentia to a life term for his role in the 1992 murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, crimes that shocked the nation and sparked a crackdown on Cosa Nostra.
Messina Denaro, 60, was led away from Palermo’s “La Maddalena” hospital by two uniformed carabinieri police and bundled into a waiting black minivan. He was wearing a brown fur-lined jacket, glasses and a brown and white woolly hat.
Judicial sources said he was being treated for cancer and had an operation last year, followed by a series of appointments under a false name.
“We had a clue to the investigation and followed it through to today’s arrest,” Palermo prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia said.
Magistrate Paolo Guido, who was also in charge of investigations into Messina Denaro, said dismantling his network of protectors was key in reaching the result following years of work.
A second man who had driven Messina Denaro to the hospital was arrested at the scene on suspicion of aiding a fugitive.
Images on social media showed locals applauding and shaking hands with police in balaclavas as the minivan carrying Messina Denaro was driven away from the suburban hospital to a secret location.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni travelled to Sicily to congratulate police chiefs after the arrest.
“We have not won the war, we have not defeated the mafia but this battle was a key battle to win, and it is a heavy blow to organised crime,” she said.
Maria Falcone, sister of the murdered judge, echoed that sentiment.
“It proves that mafiosi, despite their delusions of omnipotence, are ultimately doomed to defeat in the conflict with the democratic state,” she said.
FAST CARS, FLASHY CLOTHES
Messina Denaro comes from the town of Castelvetrano near Trapani in western Sicily, and is the son of a mafia boss.
Police said last September that he was still able to issue commands relating to the way the mafia was run in the area around Trapani, his regional stronghold.
Before he went into hiding, he was known for driving expensive cars and his taste for wearing finely tailored suits and Rolex watches.
He faces a life sentence for his role in bomb attacks in Florence, Rome and Milan that killed 10 people in 1993 and is accused by prosecutors of being solely or jointly responsible for numerous other murders in the 1990s.
In 1993 he helped organise the kidnapping of a 12-year-old boy, Giuseppe Di Matteo, in an attempt to dissuade his father from giving evidence against the mafia, prosecutors say. The boy was held in captivity for two years before he was strangled and his body dissolved in acid.
The arrest comes almost 30 years to the day since police arrested Salvatore “Toto” Riina, the Sicilian Mafia’s most powerful boss of the 20th century. He eventually died in jail in 2017, having never broken his code of silence.
“It is an extraordinary event, of historic significance,” said Gian Carlo Caselli, who was a prosecutor in Palermo at the time of Riina’s arrest.
Despite the euphoria, Italy still faces a struggle to rein in organised crime groups whose tentacles stretch far and wide.
Experts say that Cosa Nostra has been usurped by the ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia, as the most powerful organised crime group in Italy.
“There is a sense that the Sicilian Mafia is not as strong as it used to be, especially since the 90s, they have really been unable to enter the drug market and so they are really second-fiddle to the ‘Ndrangheta on that,” said Federico Varese, Professor of Criminology at Oxford University.
additional reporting by Angelo Amante and Alvise Armellini, writing by Keith Weir and Cristina Carlevaro, editing by Gavin Jones, Nick Macfie and Alex Richardson
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Sicilian Catholic Church leaders issue ban on godparents at baptisms
Catholic Church leaders ban baptismal godparents in one Italian diocese amid concern the role is more unsavory than sacred — and can be exploited by the Mafia.
Religious leaders in Catania issued a three-year ban on naming godparents at baptisms this month, claiming many families enlist local power brokers to be their children’s compari because they are more interested in securing gold necklaces and networking opportunities for their family than spiritual leadership, according to the New York Times.
Bishops and priests in the Sicilian region also shared concerns that the now mainly secular custom can embolden organized crime figures, as Archbishop Giuseppe Fiorini Morosini reportedly argued in a letter to Pope Francis in 2014.
“It’s an experiment,” Msgr. Salvatore Genchi, the vicar general of Catania, reportedly said of the ban.
Although Genchi is the godfather to at least 15 godchildren, he argued that most of the diocese’s godparents were not cut out for juggling so many responsibilities, according to the article.
The Rev. Angelo Alfio Mangano, of the Saint Maria in Ognina church in Catania, told the Times he approved of the new ban because he no longer had to deal with “threats against the parish priest” from questionable characters who sometimes used the position for social blackmail and usury.
Former Sicilian president Salvatore Cuffaro, a godfather of “just about 20” children, who once served five years in prison for tipping off a mafia don to government surveillance, told the Times he treated the sacrament with reverence.
“Despite what some priests think, I paid attention to all of my baptismal godchildren,” Cuffaro reportedly said, adding he only accepted about one in 20 requests to stand on behalf of children at baptisms.
Cuffaro, who is nicknamed “Kiss Kiss” for his intimate greetings, said that no members of the Mafia ever served as a religious godfather on Italy’s “boot,” according to the article.
“At least in Sicily, where I have lived, this doesn’t exist,” he reportedly said. “It’s only a religious bond; there are no bonds of illegality.”
The ban has reportedly put a damper on lively and opulent christening celebrations in the Sicilian region.
“It’s shocking,” Jalissa Testa, 21, reportedly said at her son’s Catania baptism on the first Sunday of the godparent embargo.
“In our hearts we know, and they will know, that he has a godfather.”
In nearby Aci Trezza, where Catania residents are sneaking off to have baptisms, Rev. Giovanni Mammino’s diocese requires godfathers to swear they were believers and not organized crime figures, the article said.
“They keep coming here so that they can have the godfathers,” Mammino reportedly said.
Nicola Sparti, 24, drove to Aci Trezza to take photos with his newly christened son in front of sea rocks that the Cyclops is said to have thrown at Odysseus, the report said.
As toddler Antonio rode in a tiny remote-controlled white Mercedes, Sparti reportedly shrugged off the new rule.
“One day the godfather’s there and the next he’s gone. But a father is forever.”
Antonio’s uncle Alfio Motta, 22, reportedly had a different take.
“I feel like the godfather,” Motta told the paper. “Even if I don’t have the title.”