The preliminary hearings judge (GUP)
of Palermo ion Wednesday sentenced Giovanni Luppino, the
Campobello di Mazara (Trapani) entrepreneur who acted as a
driver for the late superboss Matteo Messina Denaro in the last
days of his life as a wanted man until his capture after 30
years on the run in January 2023, to nine years for aggravated
aiding and abetting.
Luppino, according to the prosecution, represented in court by
DDA prosecutors Piero Padova and Gianluca De Leo, also asked for
money on behalf of the mafia boss and, together with his sons,
who were arrested last February, took care of movements,
removals and various organisational aspects of the Castelvetrano
godfather's fugitive life until his arrest on January 16 last
year.
Messina Denaro was caught while leaving a clinic where he was
being treated for cancer in Palermo.
He died in a hospital in L'Aquila on September 25 aged 62.
Messina Denaro had been convicted for his involvement in dozens
of murders, including the 1992 Cosa Nostra bombings that killed
anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
In addition to the Falcone and Borsellino assassinations, he was
convicted of the killing of Giuseppe Di Matteo, the 12-year-old
son of a mobster-turned-State witness who was strangled and
dissolved in acid in 1996, and bombings at art and religious
sites in Milan, Florence and Rome that killed 10 people and hurt
40 more in 1993.
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