Palermo prosecutors said Wednesday
that the omertà that enabled late Cosa Nostra boss Matteo
Messina Denaro to remain a fugitive to Italian justice for 30
years is still continuing many months after his death.
"Like a thick fog, total omertà shrouds everything that existed
around his figure, his contacts, his movements, and the
relationships he weaved during his many years in hiding," the
Palermo Public Prosecutor's Office led by Maurizio de Lucia said
after three more people suspected of being part of the network
that aided the Cosa Nostra head were arrested.
The three were an architect and a Mazara del Vallo hospital
radiology technician, who are accused of mafia association, and
a third person accused of external involvement in mafia
association.
It takes the number of people arrested for alleged helping the
mobster since his capture on January 16, 2023, up to 14,
including four who have been convicted.
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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