An Italian assize court on Wednesday sentenced ex-mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro to life imprisonment on appeal for his role in the 1992 assassinations of judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, according to media reports.
The assize court in Caltanissetta, Sicily, confirmed the verdict handed down in absentia in October 2020, when the Cosa Nostra leader, arrested in early 2023, was still on the run.
His lawyer, Adriana Vella, had asked for an acquittal, claiming that her client had had no role in the murders, either as a mastermind or as an executor.
In May 1992, a powerful explosion ripped open a stretch of motorway between Palermo and its airport. The blast had been so powerful that the National Geophysical Institute, which usually takes the pulse of Etna volcano, had recorded it.
Anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three members of his escort had died in this attack.
Two months later, judge Paolo Borsellino, a key partner of the murdered magistrate, was also killed in a bomb attack along with five members of his escort outside his mother's house.
Sicilian anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
These two assassinations sent shockwaves through the country and provoked a firm response from the state, which deployed large numbers of carabinieri and police officers on the island to hunt down mafia members.
Cosa Nostra leaders
Matteo Messina Denaro, a ruthless killer at the head of a major financial network who was arrested on 16 January in Sicily, was following in the footsteps of the great historical leaders of Cosa Nostra, Toto Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, who died in prison in 2017 and 2016 respectively.
Like his predecessors, he was sentenced on multiple occasions to life imprisonment for the murders ordered or carried out directly by him.
He had been arrested after 30 years on the run during a medical visit to the La Maddalena clinic in Palermo, a renowned facility where he was being treated under a fake name for colon cancer.
Since his arrest, he has been incarcerated in a high-security prison in the town of L’Aquila, in Abruzzo, a region east of Rome.
