The Sicilian mafia, “Cosa Nostra”, is “alive and still strong” following the death of one of its historic bosses, Matteo Messina Denaro, who died yesterday after being arrested after three decades on the run, the general who arrested him, Pasquale Angelosanto, announced today.
“‘Cosa Nostra’ is alive and still strong, although it has undoubtedly felt the blow, whether in the mafia province of Trapani, of which Messina Denaro was leader, or in the rest of the provinces that saw his figure as a symbol“said the general of the Carabineros (militarized police) on RAI public television.
(We recommend reading: Matteo Messina Denaro: the history and fortune of the last boss of the Sicilian mafia).
Messina Denaro was the most wanted mafia member in Italy since 1993 for his multiple crimes and for participating in the bloody wave of attacks in the 1990s. in which, among others, the anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were murdered in 1992.
On January 16, after three decades on the run, The Cosa Nostra boss was finally arrested in the Sicilian town of Campobello di Mazzara (south), near his hometown, Castelvetrano, where he lived an almost normal life thanks to a false identity and a network of cover-ups.
He was arrested when he was going to a clinic in Palermo to be treated for colon cancer that caused his death in a hospital in L’Aquila (center) to which he was taken from prison due to the worsening of his health conditions.
With his death, the doubt is the situation in which “Cosa Nostra” remains, the historical Sicilian mafia organization composed of provincial clans, also in the face of the hegemony of other underworld groups, such as the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta, one of the most powerful and bloody in the world.
(You might be interested: Who was Matteo Messina, the last Cosa Nostra boss who died in Italy?).
The latest report from the Anti-Mafia Directorate (DIA) maintains that his capture deprived the organization of a “historical and relevant figure of reference and aggravated its lasting difficulties in finding respectable leaders”, since Salvatore “Toto” Riina has also died in 2017 and Bernardo Provenzano in 2016.
But at the same time he points out that “This circumstance would not affect the operation of the organization nor is it believed that it can mitigate criminal pressure” in Sicily.
In the case of the Trapani mafia, that of Messina Denaro, the DIA alleges that “it continues to develop its own criminal activities by infiltrating the legal economic fabric”, that is, corrupting politicians and businessmen, or drug trafficking.
General Angelosanto stated in fact that The “Cosa Nostra” will soon begin searching for an heir to “Diabolik”, as he was known.
“He maintained contacts with the representatives of other mafia provinces, such as Agrigento, Palermo and others in Sicily because they saw him as an important figure (…). Now the dialectical relations will begin within the Trapani organization and the others to elect a new boss,” he said.
The investigator described Messina Denaro as “an irreducible gangster” and He announced that the authorities have already started “to discover his cover-ups and find their wealth and the sectors of the economy controlled by businessmen close to the organization.”
To do this, they analyze “the copious documentation” found in their hiding place, “hundreds of papers, agendas, folios, accounts and references to people with names or acronyms.”
His arrest involved the arrest of eight alleged collaborators who had helped him during his three decades on the run, from his sister Rosalía to his driver Giovanni Luppino, to his personal doctor, Alfonso Tumbarello, or the Bonafede family, who lent him their last name.
During his agony in the hospital he has been accompanied by his sister Giovanna, his niece and lawyer Lorenza Guttadauro, and by his only known legitimate daughter, Lorenza, 27 years old and whom he saw for the first time last April when she went to visit him in prison. .
EFE
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