Following several days of suffering, Matteo Messina Denaro, the notorious Cosa Nostra mob boss who had been on the run for three decades and was captured in January, has passed away at L'Aquila hospital. The 62-year-old crime lord had been battling an aggressive form of colon cancer, detected in 2020 while he was still a fugitive. Colon cancer was the trail that Italian Special Forces (Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale (ROS), or Special Operations Group) and Palermo prosecutors followed, ultimately leading them to the boss who had eluded justice for three decades. Following his apprehension, Messina Denaro has been receiving chemotherapy treatment at the L'Aquila super prison.
The death of Denaro highlights the failure of the Italian state and its judicial system. Even at the point of death, Denaro did not express any regret for his actions. He carries with him to his grave many Cosa Nostra secrets.
Denaro’s many “credits” start with the Addaura bombing (the 1989 failed assassination attempt on Palermo's investigating judge Giovanni Falcone), and continue through the tragic Via dei Georgofili massacre in Florence, the unsuccessful murder plot against Maurizio Costanzo, and the securing of the archives belonging to the infamous "boss of bosses," Totò Riina. But also the red agenda of Paolo Borsellino, and the reason behind so many killings and carnage.
Most importantly, without his cancerous disease, Denaro would possibly never have been found by the Italian forces. He did not need to relocate or transfer, as many long expected he had. He, as other Cosa Nostra fugitives, always remained hidden in “their” western Sicilian territories, eluding any search by the authorities.
Following the death of Denaro, Italy still identifies four fugitives classified by the Interior Ministry as "extremely high-risk individuals." Among them are three individuals associated with organized crime in southern Italy, along with a Sardinian man who played a role in kidnappings during the 1980s as part of an anonymous abduction group (Anonima Sarda) that targeted prominent members of Italian noble and business families.
Now, those individuals at the top of the most-wanted list: Attilio Cubeddu (Anonima Sarda), Giovanni Motisi (Cosa Nostra and possible future leader of the group), Renato Cinquegranella (Camorra), and Pasquale Bonavota (‘Ndrangheta). So, it is not really over with the death of Mattia Messina Denaro, because the engine of the mafia groups (cosche mafiose) is still running and operating wherever the State lacks communication and support, leaving local citizens under pressure to “join a bigger family.” For instance, ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mob group, is still one of the leaders of international narcotraffic in Europe.
The Italian government, now and for the last four decades, has seemed appalled yet powerless in front of the territorial power shown by these groups. Not only have these groups dictated the law, but they’ve determined life or death for many individuals. The capillaries of their reach and their strategies are known to be very effective in influencing the Italian political powers, which more than once have shown themselves to be rotten and vulnerable at both the national and local levels.
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