Italian politicians and police have reacted with fury after a court recommended that the Sicilian mafia’s most bloodthirsty boss be freed from jail because he is old and sick.
The country’s supreme court ruled that Salvatore Riina, 86, who is linked to more than 150 murders, has “the right to die with dignity” and recommended that a lower court review its decision to keep him locked up until his death.
Franco Roberti, Italy’s chief mafia prosecutor, said yesterday that he rejected the supreme court’s view that Riina, who suffers from kidney cancer, heart problems and Parkinson’s disease, was no longer a threat.
“We have evidence to prove this theory wrong and show that Riina is still the head of Cosa Nostra,” he told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
Nicknamed “The Beast”, Riina imposed his rule on the Sicilian mafia in the 1980s with a string of murders before declaring war on the Italian state and ordering the killing of the anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992.
Advertisement
Captured in 1993 and now serving 12 concurrent life sentences, Riina has shown no remorse for his reign of terror, and while the Sicilian mafia has since been weakened by arrests, it is now allegedly gathering strength as senior bosses emerge from jail.
Two bosses in Palermo were recently overheard on a police wiretap claiming no one would move up the mob hierarchy until Riina died, suggesting that he still had clout.
Last November police alleged that Riina’s brother Gaetano Riina was a silent partner in the management of a large fruit and vegetable wholesale market in Fondi, south of Rome.
Riina has been overheard in jail criticising the way that Massimo Messina Denaro, the last boss from the 1980s still on the run, has been managing Cosa Nostra’s affairs.
Tina Montinaro, the widow of Giovanni Falcone’s driver, who was blown up along with the magistrate on Riina’s orders, urged the courts not to free her husband’s killer.
Advertisement
“I don’t think Riina ever thought about granting a ‘dignified death’ to my husband, or to Giovanni Falcone or any of the victims he blew up,” she said.
Riina’s lawyers suggested he be released to house arrest, suggesting a return to his home town Corleone, which was made famous by The Godfather films.
“We will not allow Riina to return to Corleone,” said Carmelo Miceli, head of the centre-left Democratic Party in Palermo.
Rosy Bindi, the head of the Italian parliament’s anti-mafia commission, said Riina was receiving all the medical care he needed in hospital and should stay there.
“What we need to do is rule out the risk that his home becomes a shrine,” she said.