PALERMO (ITALY) – Matteo Messina Denaro, a notorious Italian mafia don, was awarded a new life term in absentia for the role he played in the 1992 murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
Denaro, 58, is the most powerful member of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra. He has been evading law enforcement agencies since 1993 and already faced a life term for his role in bomb blasts in Florence, Rome and Milan that left 10 dead.
Late on Tuesday, a court in the Caltanissetta, Sicily, ruled that Denaro also masterminded the killing of Falcone and Borsellino a year earlier.
On May 23, 1992, Falcone, his wife and three policemen escorting him were killed when their car blew up on the motorway while they were on their way to Palermo from the airport.
Borsellino and five security personnel escorting him were killed five months later when a car bomb exploded while they were crossing a street in Palermo. He was on his way to visit his mother.
Hailing from a small town near the western Sicilian city of Trapani, Denaro is believed to be solely responsible for numerous other murders that shook Italy in the 1990s.
In 1993, he orchestrated the kidnapping of a 12-year-old boy, Giuseppe Di Matteo, in a bid to prevent his father from giving evidence against the mafia, according to prosecutors. He was held in captivity for two years before being garotted and his remains dissolved in acid.
Prosecutions over the decades have weakened the Sicilian mafia, which is now overshadowed by the Calabrian ‘ndrangheta, which plays a key role in drug running in Italy. However, Cosa Nostra is very much part of Sicilian life as they undertake activities such as loan-sharking, extortion and drug dealing.