Messina Denaro stopped but not recognised 7 yrs ago

(ANSA) - ROME, JAN 25 - Matteo Messina Denaro, the fugitive Mafia superboss arrested a year ago after 30 years on the run and who died of cancer last September, was stopped at a police checkpoint seven years ago but was not recognised by the Carabinieri who checked his ID, Palermo prosecutor Maurizio De Lucia, the man who caught him, said Thursday.
    Denaro was caught while leaving a clinic where he was being treated for cancer in Palermo on January 16 2023.
    He died in a hospital in L'Aquila on September 25 aged 62 after his battle with cancer.
    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.
    Long idolised by younger mafiosi for his ruthlessness and playboy-like charisma,, Messina Denaro sealed a reputation for brutality by murdering a rival Trapani boss and strangling his three-months-pregnant girlfriend.
    The boss, who reportedly enjoyed orgies with Palermo women while on the run, once said he could have filled a cemetery with those he had killed.
    He was reportedly helped dodge police by a "middle class Mafia", not only around his fief at Trapani but also around Sicily, Italian police have said. (ANSA).