Mafia and massacres: life imprisonment requested for superflatant Matteo Messina Denaro
Mafia, two supporters of Matteo Messina Denaro arrested
Messina Denaro, de Raho: strangely you don't get to catch him
Share
21 October 2020The Court of Assizes of Caltanissetta, chaired by Roberta Serio, after more than 14 hours of council chambers, sentenced the fugitive boss Matteo Messina Denaro to life imprisonment for the '92 massacres of Capaci and Via D'Amelio cost the life to the judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino and to the agents of their escorts.
Head of the Trapani mafia, Messina Denaro, wanted since 1993, was among the leaders of the Cosa Nostra massacre line imposed by Totò Riina's Cortonese.
The fugitive originally from Castelvetrano has already been sentenced to life imprisonment for the 1993 massacres in Florence, Rome and Milan in which ten people died and had never been tried for the bombs that caused the death of the magistrates Paolo Borsellino, Giovanni Falcone and Francesca Morvillo and eight escort agents.
This night's ruling recognizes the role of the fugitive from Castelvetrano (Trapani) in the 'massacre strategy' of Cosa Nostra, as a link between the 1992 bombings claimed by Totò Riina and the attacks in northern Italy, in Florence, Milan and Rome in 1993, commissioned by Bernardo Provenzano.
In that summer he began his hiding which has continued for 27 years.
"Messina Denaro was a mafia man who gave up any vital space of autonomy knowing that it was the inevitable duty to pay for his rise in Cosa Nostra, a career that Riina favored, appointing him regent of the province of Trapani", said the Pm Paci during the indictment.
During the trial, which began in 2017, the Court of Assizes of Caltanissetta listened to dozens of collaborators of justice, reconstructing the months preceding the attacks that led to the killing of the magistrates Paolo Borsellino, Giovanni Falcone, Francesca Morvillo and eight escort agents. .
"The decision to kill the two judges was not an isolated event, but well placed at the center of a massacre strategy in which Matteo Messina Denaro participated with awareness - added the prosecutor during the indictment - giving a consent, a total availability of their person, their men, their territory, the Trapani families on the Riina floor which was so strengthened and which allowed the criminal madness of the head of the Cosa Nostra to continue in its intent: indeed, more than consent I would speak of total dedication to the Corleonese cause ".
The trial against Matteo Messina Denaro, principal of the '92 massacres, analyzed the months preceding the two attacks on the anti-mafia judges like a prism.
Almost thirty years later, the Caltanissetta prosecutor has animated a re-reading of those moments, in the light of new testimonies, associated with elements that emerged during the trials carried out in recent decades.
During the trial, two meetings took place at the end of 1991, one in Enna and another in Castelvetrano, during which the 'massacre strategy' to be adopted was decided.
To clarify the profile of the fugitive close to the two massacres, "there are not only the new repentants of Trapani, but also the declarations of Spatuzza and Tranchina", said prosecutor Gabriele Paci, holder of the accusation, as well as "the interceptions of Toto 'Riina in prison, very clear in indicating who Matteo Messina Denaro was, also in the reference to the murder of Paolo Borsellino in Marsala ".
In early '92, Francesco Craparotta and Vincenzo D'Amico, heads of the Mafia family of Marsala, were killed - according to what emerges from other trials - for refusing to kill Judge Borsellino.
The same motive would have caused the death of Vincenzo Milazzo, head of the Alcamo family, and his partner Antonella Bonomo, killed on July 14, a few days after the massacre of via d'Amelio.
For this - according to the accusatory thesis - Don Ciccio Messina Denaro of Castelvetrano and Mariano Agate of Mazara del Vallo, who had alternated at the top of the mafia family of Trapani, would have taken a 'soft' step back, to avoid fractures with Toto 'Riina , described by repentants as a despot looking for consensus.
So his son Matteo, who was thirty at the time, and Enzo Sinacori, who later became a collaborator of justice, would take the place of the two old mafia bosses.
Both in February 1992, together with the brothers Giuseppe and Filippo Graviano, participated in the so-called 'Roman mission' in which the killing in the capital of Judge Falcone was planned, as well as some journalists, including Maurizio Costanzo.
A failed operation which however would demonstrate full participation in the 1992 'massacre strategy'.