It is the end of a 30-year career. It is above all the end of a hellish spiral of crime and bloodshed. This Monday, the carabinieri arrested Matteo Messina Denaro -60 years old- at the Palermo clinic where he was being treated.
The 60-year-old man has been one of the main figures of Sicilian organized crime since the 1980s, passing through the successor of Toto Riina and Bernardo Provenzano at the head of “Cosa Nostra”. His trafficking activities, kidnappings and murders perpetrated or sponsored by him earned him several life sentences in absentia.
“In absentia” because, until Monday, the authorities had not been able to get their hands on him and, a fugitive since 1993, Matteo Messina Denaro was the most wanted man in Italy.
An arrest to applause
To better understand the character, it may be necessary to start at the end of his story. In other words, report his arrest this Monday morning, according to the elements reported by the guardian. It is 9:35 am when a squad of carabinieri enters the facilities of La Maddalena, a clinic in Palermo where Matteo Messina Denaro was admitted to be treated for colon cancer. According to the British newspaper, the most wanted man in the country has lived there for even a year, under the somewhat ironic borrowed name of Andrea Bonafede (reminiscent of the Latin expression “In good faithor “in good faith”).
However, nothing is yet proven on this point, as Matteo Messina Denaro’s life is full of noise and fury. The truth, on the other hand, is that seeing his 30-year career come to an end, the mobster continues trying to escape from the agents. But, surrounded, he finally allows himself to be challenged without resistance. The gendarmes were then able to handcuff him to the applause of the other patients.
The man who ‘filled a cemetery without help’
His pedigree explains why the man is so unpopular and why his downfall seemed so long awaited. Born in Trapani, Sicily, in 1962, Matteo Messina Denaro is the son of a spawn of the “Cosa Nostra”. He himself has been bathed in blood for forty years. West of France He recalled that in addition to being the most wanted criminal in Italy, the FBI considered him one of the biggest drug traffickers in the world.
In addition to narcotics, he also did not disdain the sale of weapons. His activities also extend to waste management, wind power and retail businesses. In the homicide registry, at least 50 murders are attributed to him before the age of 30, the first of which he committed at 18, according to the parisian.
He is also implicated in the shocking attack perpetrated against judge Giovanni Falcone, a magistrate who is a hero of the anti-mafia fight whose life -as well as that of his wife and that of three bodyguards from the escort- was taken during an explosive attack on the stretch of road where he was traveling on May 23, 1992. A boast by Matteo Messina Denaro, and broadcast here by the guardianblocks character: “I filled a graveyard by myself.”
779 days of forced imprisonment and one murder
In 1993, he was still behind a series of bombings carried out in Florence, Milan and Rome. A particularly detestable vintage in a career that is not without its ups and downs, it was also in 1993 that he organized the kidnapping of the young Giuseppe Di Matteo, narrated here by The New Sardinia.
In November, he launched the kidnapping of this 13-year-old boy, the son of a “repentant”, a nickname taken from Christian vocabulary and which in Italy describes these mafia executives who denounce the actions of their colleagues. The idea is to force the father to deny the confidences that he gave to the police. 779 days of kidnapping later, he has the teenager strangled and his body dissolved in acid.
In absence
Is it because of this murder, or because of one of the countless news stories that preceded it, that he is called “Diabolik”? No, according to the parisian, which points out that the nickname comes from an Italian comic strip of which Matteo Messina Denaro is a great reader. He inherits another nickname, Sicilian: “u sicu“, “Le Sec” which refers to his tall and thin silhouette.
His real name, meanwhile, appears for the first time in its entirety in the justice records in 1989, it also specifies The New Sardinia. The charges multiply: mafia association, theft, possession of explosives and of course murder. Files for which he ended up receiving, over the years, various convictions. in absence forever. Because, when he feels the traps of justice and investigators, Matteo Messina Denaro flees, at the end of his chaotic year 1993.
A disappearance that is not a retirement, since after Toto Riina and Bernardo Provenzano – the last representatives of the influence of the gangsters who came from the town of Corleone, who will inspire the writer Mario Puzo the name of the clan at the center of the Godfather, adapted to the big screen by the filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola -who died in prison in 2016 and 2017 respectively- takes up the torch of “Cosa Nostra”.
police obsession
But where does the recluse live? And is he so lonely for that matter? Matteo Messina Denaro may haunt the Italian police, but he gets away from them time and time again. For decades, the details again The New Sardinia, the authorities’ strategy is to isolate him, raid after raid, arresting his collaborators, his relatives and even his sister. His property was also seized several times.
The tactic seems at first to be in vain, and we see it everywhere. In 2010, an informant claimed that he attended a Palermo soccer team match at the stadium and took the opportunity to coordinate with other mob dignitaries. In 2015, Radio Onda Blu broadcast satellite images of a house in Baden, Germany, which is said to be his. According to the guardianwe still see him in Spain, the United Kingdom, South America, where he maintains contacts.
At least we think we see it. Indeed, the arrests are linked, but it is always the wrong neck that we put our hands on. As in September 2021 when a Liverpuldien, tracks the British newspaper, a 54-year-old sitting in a restaurant in The Hague in the Netherlands is immobilized, hooded and then taken from the place -in front of all the customers- and taken to the station by the police., at the height of a mistake that they recognize after a few days.
A composite portrait in permanent evolution
In the investigators’ defense, Matteo Messina Denaro has become very difficult to recognize. Informants swear that he underwent surgery and even managed to erase his fingerprints. In addition, the police, working from rare photos dating from the 1980s or early 1990s, crossing them with various elements, develop the composite portrait of him throughout the investigation. Next, we can thus contemplate the aged snapshot of him.
In the one presented below, the experts imagined him dressed as a woman.
For other specialists in Sicilian banditry, Matteo Messina Denaro has not gone very far and does not hide much. In the biography that he dedicated to her in 2020, the journalist Lirio Abbate affirms that he is still used to driving around Palermo in a sports car, with his lover at the moment.
The theme of complicity
However, the net closes in on this lover of travel, of expensive suits, and who likes to screw his Ray-Ban glasses on his nose. No longer communicates with the outside – note here West of France – for pizzinismall pieces of paper that he blackens with his instructions and that he transmits to his recipients thanks to trusted messengers with a thousand precautions: to the point that the message sometimes reaches its destination after several months.
Now that justice has her man behind bars, she will also be in charge of shedding light on the latest friendships and complicities from which Matteo Messina Denaro has benefited. And especially in the support that will have allowed one of the alleged sponsors of the attack against Judge Falcone, the murderer of Giuseepe Di Matteo and dozens of others, to make fun of her for 30 years.
Source: BFM TV
