Matteo Messina Denaro, long considered the most wanted Italian mafia leader in the world before he was captured in January after 30 years of searches, entered an irreversible coma on Friday, the Italian news agency ANSA announced, cited by DPA and Agerpres.
Matteo Denaro, arrested in ItalyPhoto: Vincenzo Nuzzolese/SOPA Images / Shutterstock Editorial / Profimedia
He suffers from colon cancer and his doctors announced that Messina Denaro will not be able to recover from this disease. At his request, the life support machines were disconnected, announced the doctors at the hospital in L’Aquila, a city in central Italy.
At the beginning of August, the 61-year-old mobster underwent intestinal surgery at the San Salvatore hospital in L’Aquila. Although the surgical intervention was successful, his advanced cancer caused an irreversible deterioration of his health, stated several sources quoted by the ANSA agency.
On Friday, Messina Denaro suffered a consistent hemorrhage and, shortly afterwards, entered an irreversible coma, according to ANSA.
Messina Denaro, the convicted leader of the Sicilian mafia Cosa Nostra, was captured by the Police in January 2023 after a 30-year manhunt.
The mobster, considered for a long time the most wanted fugitive in Italy, was captured by a special Police unit at an oncology clinic in Palermo, where he was receiving medical treatment under a false name.
Messina Denaro had been sentenced in absentia to life in prison for his role in a series of bloody murders and car bombings in Italy. Among other crimes, he was charged with planting a car bomb in 1992, an incident that killed two of Italy’s top anti-mafia prosecutors at the time, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, among other victims.
Messina Denaro was considered a close confidant of former mafia leaders Bernardo Provenzano and Salvatore “Toto” Riina.
