Messina Denaro fails to appear in court hearing

(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 9 - Jailed mafia superboss Matteo Messina Denaro did not appear at a trial hearing in the Sicilian town of Caltanissetta on Thursday after his lawyer and niece Lorenza Guttadauro quit on Wednesday.
    60-year-old Messina Denaro, who was arrested at a private cancer clinic in Palermo in January after 30 years on the run, had not appointed another lawyer, the presiding judge said.
    Denaro had been due to appear via video link from the maximum-security prison in L'Aquila where he is being held.
    Calogero Montante has been appointed as his ex officio lawyer.
    The Trapani superboss has been condemned to life in prison in absentia for his involvement in dozens of murders, including the 1992 bombings that killed anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, 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. (ANSA).