Jailed mafia boss Matteo Messina
Denaro claims to be a "stateless farmer" according to case
documents made public on Tuesday.
"My name is Matteo Messina Denaro, I used to work in the
countryside and I was a farmer. I no longer have a residence
because the municipality cancelled it. I am now stateless," said
Messina Denaro during an interrogation on February 21.
Asked about his economic situation, the Cosa Nostra kingpin who
was Italy's most wanted man until he was caught at a Palermo
cancer clinic on January 16 after 30 years on the run, said he
"lacked nothing".
"I had property assets, but you took them all away," he added.
"I'm not going to say if I still have something, it's not like
I'm stupid," said Messina Denaro, 60.
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.
Following his arrest in January, he is now being treated for
cancer in a special
chemotherapy facility that has been set up in a maximum-security
prison at L'Aquila in Abruzzo.
However, the interrogation made public on Tuesday was in
connection with criminal proceedings over charges of aggravated
extortion.
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