The court of appeal yesterday jailed a former Italian crime boss over his role in the 1992 assassination of the anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
Former Cosa Nostra boss Matteo Messina Denaro’s appeal was rejected by the Sicilian court in Caltanissetta, upholding the life sentence that had been imposed against him in October 2020. Denaro, who had been evading capture, wasn’t captured until early 2023.
Adriana Vella, his attorney, had advocated for his acquittal, asserting that he had had no involvement in the killing of the two judges.
In May 1992, a huge explosion on the highway leading from Palermo to its airport wrecked Falcone’s automobile, killing him, his wife, and three bodyguards.
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Two months later Borsellino, a close associate of Falcone who had adopted the same successful tactics against the mafia, was killed in another bombing along with five members of his escort.
The two assassinations created a political shockwave that led to a state crackdown on organised crime, with police and soldiers sent to Sicily to track down those responsible.
A number of senior mafia bosses were subsequently convicted of the killings.
Denaro who headed up a major organised financial network, was arrested in January in Sicily after 30 years on the run. He had used a false name to attend a medical appointment for treatment for cancer of the colon.
He had already been convicted and sentenced to multiple life sentences for murders he either ordered or carried out personally.
Africa Today News, New York reports that his conviction follows those of past leaders of the Cosa Nostra, Toto Riina and Bernardo Provenzano. They both died in jail while serving their sentences, in 2017 and 2016 respectively.
Denaro is being held in a maximum-security prison in Aquila, in the central Abruzzo region, east of Rome.