Who was Matteo Messina Denaro, 61-year-old Sicilian mafia boss who has died in custody?
Matteo Messina Denaro
Italian mafia Matteo Messina Denaro, who spent 30 years on the run before his arrest in January this year, has died while receiving medical treatment, Italian media reported.
The ANSA news agency on Monday (Sept 25)said that the 61-year-old diedin the L'Aquila Hospital in central Italy after slipping into an "irreversible coma" over the weekend. Denaro was seeking treatment for colon cancer. The former head of the Cosa Nostra Sicilian mob requested no aggressive medical treatment, and the medical experts stopped feeding him after he was declared to be in a coma.
Here's all you need to know:
Who is Matteo Messina Denaro
Matteo Messina Denaro, son of a mafioso, was born on 26 April 1962 in the southwestern Sicilian town of Castelvetrano. Following in his father's footsteps, he joined the mafia mob at the age of 15 and carried out his first killing at the age of 18.
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For Denaro, crime was a family affair. His brother Salvatore Messina Denaro was arrested in 2009-10 and his sister Patrizia Messina Denaro, a member of the mafia, was arrested in 2013 and was sentenced to 14 years in prison, which she is still serving.
Since then, Denaro, nicknamed Diabolik, has been unstoppable. From 1993, the former boss of the Sicilian Mafia was considered Europe's most wanted criminal.
He was given several life sentences in absentia for his crimes, most notably in 1992 due to his involvement in the murder of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
Denaro received his latest life sentence in 2020 for the fatal bombings in Milan, Florence and Rome in 1990 and for the murder and tortureof the11-year-old sonof his enemy.
He was regarded as one of the successors of Bernardo Provenzano, a mafia arrested while hiding in a farmhouse in April 2006.
According to the UK's University of Bath, Feliaa Allum, professor of comparative organised crime and corruption, Denaro represents the final link between the belligerent and overt Cosa Nostra of the early 1990s and the silent, business-like Mafia of the 21st century.
(With inputs from agencies)
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