RIP Matteo Messina DenaroTranslated with Google from Corriere:
Matteo Messina Denaro died today from the consequences of stage four colon cancer. The mafia boss of Castelvetrano was in the inmate ward of the San Salvatore hospital in L'Aquila. The arrest, after 30 years on the run, dates back to January this year .
He lost his challenge to the state by just eight months, but he lost it. Eight months spent in "hard prison", in the cell of the L'Aquila penitentiary and then in that of the city hospital, due to the tumor that had caused his capture on January 16th and has now killed him.
" You took me for the illness, without it you wouldn't have taken me ", he had said in a provocative tone to the Palermo prosecutor de Lucia and his deputy Paolo Guido, in the February interrogation, after the arrest. "In the meantime we have taken it", replied the prosecutor in kind, claiming the final result of a match played by Matteo Messina Denaro to die in hiding like his father Francesco, the Castelvetrano boss wanted since 1990 and returned as a corpse to the State and its family members in 1998.
His son Matteo, who inherited his legacy as mafia boss , wanted to emulate him in this too and remained a fugitive for almost thirty years. Not a record, because for example Bernardo Provenzano was arrested 43 years after the first arrest order, but he remained the only boss at large among those convicted for the massacres of 1992 and 1993 : Giovanni Falcone and his wife, Paolo Borsellino , the escort agents and then the innocent victims killed and injured between Florence, Milan and Rome.
A defeat that the State could not accept, and which it managed to avoid with the last move, ensuring that the elusive godfather of Castelvetrano spent at least the final stretch of his life in prison. Without getting anything from him other than the proud display of not wanting to repent .
"I have never slandered anyone and I will die without slandering anyone , this is Messina Denaro", he proclaimed before judge Alfredo Montalto in another judicial face-to-face, a month after the arrest. "I will never be sorry" , he had anticipated three days earlier to the prosecutors, with the prosecutor De Lucia ready to take up the challenge: "I understood it, but did I ask you to collaborate?". "No". "So?". "I have to thank her because you kept your word, she saw me and said "I will be treated", and I said thank you, and it was true." Until his last breath, with the National Health Service taking care of himboth as a wanted man, when he was operated on and subjected to specialist therapies under a false name, and as a prisoner, finally accepting the mafioso's request not to be resuscitated in the event of a coma.
In recent times, however, when he realized that the sand in the hourglass was running out, the mafia boss began to make demands, insisting on having everything he was entitled to according to his own interpretation of laws and regulations; no longer the haughty and proud boss, but an ordinary prisoner who sees the end .
In the writings entrusted to a sort of diary found in his hideout in Campobello di Mazara (notebooks full of thoughts and words elaborated over the years), he had noted among other things: «I have always thought it would be nice to know when my last night on earth rather than get hit by a car or something." Better a conscious and somewhat expected death than a sudden and unexpected one. Perhaps to have time to say goodbye to the family , which has always been central to Messina Denaro's life. With whom he finally wanted to join his daughter Lorenza , whom he had in hiding but never met before the capture , who after the talks behind barshe asked and obtained to bear his father's surname .
Family of blood but also of mafia , in which almost no one remained immune from investigations or arrests. Apart from the patriarch who managed to avoid prison, Matteo's only brother and two out of four of Matteo's sisters, four out of four brothers-in-law, and then nephews, cousins ??and various relatives have passed through a cell (or still are there): all under investigation for complicity with Cosa Nostra and for having protected the fugitive of the heir whose photo they keep in their homes next to that of the deceased founder.
Matteo, on the other hand, was alive and impregnable , with the entire family dedicated to ensuring that he remained so. They succeeded until one of the sisters, Rosalia , unknowingly offered the ROS carabinieri the route to the La Maddalena clinic in Palermo, with that piece of paper hidden inside the leg of a chair where she had transcribed the medical records of her sick brother. There she shattered the mission of the boss and his family unit, sacrificed to guarantee the impregnability of the mafia boss of the province of Trapani.
Role that Messina Denaro has covered without confusing it with that of "boss of bosses" of Cosa Nostra already occupied by Riina , indeed stepping out when the other bosses asked him to reconstitute the Dome, perhaps fearing the outbreak of conflicts (including armed ones) that he no longer wanted to face.
Despite having remained a faithful ally of the Corleonesi - in the mafia wars fought in the 1980s and early 1990s, as well as in the terrorist strategy deployed with the attacks of '92 and '93, where he was first a soldier and then a strategist - Matteo 'is in fact subsequently aligned with the "submersion" strategy adopted by Bernardo Provenzano , after the arrest of Riina and his most faithful followers.
The godfather of Castelvetrano had a relationship with the other Corleonese boss marked by respect and cordiality , as can be read in the obsequious but proud letters in which he asked for his intervention to resolve issues between opposing clans; although in interrogations he denied ever knowing him "visually", that is, in person, but only through TV. Putting forward a rather surreal version to justify the correspondence where he and Provenzano talked about business , as if he had been forced to turn to a near-stranger: «When you lead a certain type of life, I am a fugitive accused of mafia, he is a fugitive accused of mafia , where we go?".
Matteo Messina Denaro died with several life sentences on his shoulders , inflicted on him for at least fourteen murders plus massacres , but until the end he maintained that he only knew about the mafia from the newspapers. As real mafiosi have always done. Admitting only that his only goal was to make money. Moving between Italy and abroad, where he said he went often starting from 2006, after Provenzano's arrest and the discovery of the pizzini that he had sent him. Written on the computer. That computer that the investigators are still looking for , not being satisfied with the accounting of current expenses jotted down on the sheets spread by him and his sister. But the mafia boss denied ever having used it; as well ashe denied having the availability of other hideouts besides those discovered (which magistrates and investigators continue to search for: the most important and secret papers must be kept there which probably guaranteed him protection during such a long absence, which only ended due to illness ). However, adding: "If I had these things, I would never give them, it doesn't make sense for my type of mentality."
Like money. Where did he hide them? How did he invest them, and through whom? “If I have something I don't say it, it would be stupid,” he replied to the judge. Secrets destined to remain secrets, perhaps even more so now that the boss is dead.
Is it true that he had Riina's archive with him , brought to safety from the hideout which was not searched after the arrest in January '93 by other mafiosi who took care to paint the walls to prevent fingerprints from being taken? It is another question that has not been answered, not even after the capture of Messina Denaro. If that archive exists and he kept it, it will now be even more difficult to find it. The boss continued to deny everything, but always in his own way. Telling the prosecutors that he is not a mafia member but that he "knows the mentality of the mafiosi" because of the environment where he was born and raised; if he had been - he added - in his house the investigators would not have found the "pizzini" that they are still working on and which have already led to some arrests, but "only the prints on the wall and the furniture". As happened in '93 in Riina's hideout, precisely. «So you know something about painting walls before and after the arrests?», the investigators tried to frame him, trying to glean something about that still mysterious affair. «No, I don't know anything», he immediately shut up.
A way to speak without saying anything , remaining the custodian of the mafia's secrets - about the excellent crimes, the massacres, the relationships with politics and power, the protections it enjoyed - even after losing the challenge with the State . Even for the only eight months of life he had left.
https://www.corriere.it/cronache/23...228172-509d-11ee-a355-a30027630bcd.shtml
