Matteo Messina Denaro, one of Italy’s most wanted persons until his capture earlier this year, has passed away.
The 61-year-old man was believed to be a leader of the infamous Cosa Nostra Mafia for 30 years before his capture in January.
At his arrest, he was being treated for cancer and transferred from prison to a hospital last month.
Denaro was believed to be guilty of multiple murders.
In 2002, he was tried and sentenced to life in absentia for offenses, including his role in the 1992 murders of anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. He once boasted that he could “fill a cemetery” with his victims.
In addition, he supervised racketeering, illegal waste disposal, money laundering, and drug trafficking on behalf of the Cosa Nostra organized crime syndicate.
Even though he had been on the run since 1993, it was believed that Messina Denaro was still issuing orders to his subordinates from various covert locations.
According to local media, he lapsed into an irreversible coma on Friday at a hospital in L’Aquila, central Italy, after requesting no aggressive medical treatment.
Matteo Messina Denaro, one of Italy’s most wanted persons until his capture earlier this year, has passed away.
In recent months, he had undergone surgery for cancer-related concerns but reportedly had not recovered from the most recent operation.
L’Aquila Mayor Pierluigi Biondi confirmed Denaro’s demise by writing on X (previously Twitter) that it was “the epilogue of an existence lived without remorse or regret, a painful chapter of recent history that we cannot erase.”
In addition to his crimes, Denaro was believed to be Cosa Nostra’s final “secret keeper.” Numerous informants and prosecutors believe he possessed all the information and names of those involved in several of the Mafia’s most notorious crimes.
More than one hundred members of the armed forces participated in his January detention, which occurred at a private clinic in Palermo, the capital of Sicily, where he was receiving chemotherapy.
Matteo Messina Denaro, one of Italy’s most wanted persons until his capture earlier this year, has passed away.
He had been a symbol of the state’s impotence to reach the highest levels of organized crime syndicates for many years.
Italian investigators frequently came near to apprehending Denaro by observing his closest associates. This led to the 2013 detention of his sister, Patrizia, and a number of his associates.
Police also seized valuable businesses associated with him, isolating him further.
Police had to rely on digital composites to reconstruct his appearance in the decades following his escape from justice. His voice recording was not published until 2021.
A Formula 1 fan from Liverpool was detained at gunpoint in a restaurant in the Netherlands in September 2021 after being misidentified as Denaro.
SOURCE – (BBC)
