Palermo prosecutors on Friday
requested a 20-year prison sentence for Matteo Messina Denaro's
sister Rosalia for allegedly helping the late fugitive Cosa
Nostra superboss during his 30-year run from justice.
She is accused of aggravated mafia association and receiving
stolen goods.
The woman has been in prison since March last year.
According to the investigators, she helped her brother evade
capture and managed on his behalf the 'cash box' of the mafia
'family' and the transmission network of the 'pizzini' (orders),
thus allowing the mafia leader to maintain relations with his
men during his long period on the run.
Messina Denaro was caught in mid-January last year while leaving
a clinic where he was being treated for cancer in Palermo. He
died in a hospital in L'Aquila on September 25 aged 62.
Messina Denaro had been convicted for his involvement in dozens
of murders, including the 1992 Cosa Nostra bombings that killed
anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
In addition to the Falcone and Borsellino assassinations, he was
convicted of the killing of Giuseppe Di Matteo, the 12-year-old
son of a mobster-turned-State witness who was strangled and
dissolved in acid in 1996, and bombings at art and religious
sites in Milan, Florence and Rome that killed 10 people and hurt
40 more in 1993.
Long idolised by younger mafiosi for his ruthlessness and
playboy-like charisma,, Messina Denaro sealed a reputation for
brutality by murdering a rival Trapani boss and strangling his
three-months-pregnant girlfriend.
The boss, who reportedly enjoyed orgies with Palermo women while
on the run, once said he could have filled a cemetery with those
he had killed.
He was reportedly helped dodge police by a "middle class Mafia",
not only around his fief at Trapani but also around Sicily,
Italian police have said.
Earlier this week police arrested three men including a Sicilian
architect for helping the boss dodge the police.
More recently the architect allegedly managed cash under the
post-COVID EU-funded National Recovery and Resilience Plan
(NRRP).
Palermo prosecutors said that the iron-lad omertà that enabled
the boss to remain a fugitive for so long is still continuing
many months after his death.
The three arrested Wednesday were the architect, bassed at
Limbiate near Milan, and a Mazara del Vallo hospital radiology
technician, who are accused of mafia association, and a third
person accused of external involvement in mafia association.
It takes the number of people arrested for allegedly helping the
mobster since his capture on January 16, 2023, up to 14,
including four who have been convicted.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
