Messina Denaro: Il suo primo interrogatorio e la determinazione di non pentirsi
Matteo Messina Denaro, the notorious mafia boss who passed away at the age of 62, spoke for the first time in front of the Palermo magistrates on February 13th. In less than two hours, he discussed topics such as the mafia, his family, and even the crime of external participation in a mafia association. The Chief Prosecutor of Palermo, Maurizio de Lucia, and his deputy, Paolo Guido, listened to him. “I don’t want to be a superhero or arrogant, you took me for my illness,” Messina Denaro said during his first interrogation. He passed away seven months later. “Now that I have the illness, I can’t stay out anymore and I have to come back here. So, I live a life like a tree planted in the middle of the forest,” he explained. He also revealed that in Campobello di Mazara, where he lived under a false name, he created another identity as Francesco. “I played poker, ate at restaurants, and went to gamble.”
During the interrogation, Matteo Messina Denaro claimed to be unaware of what Cosa Nostra was and said, “I consider myself a man of honor, but not as a mafioso. I only know about Cosa Nostra from newspapers… maybe I did business with them without knowing they were Cosa Nostra.” He also denied committing the crimes he was accused of: “Massacres and murders… I have absolutely nothing to do with them. They can accuse me of anything, what can I do?”
He vehemently denied any involvement in the murder of Giuseppe Di Matteo, the son of a pentito (mafia turncoat) Santino Di Matteo, who was kidnapped at the age of 12, killed, and dissolved in acid at the age of 14. “Let me tell you one thing: maybe it’s the thing that matters the most to me. I am not a saint, but I have nothing to do with the murder of the child.” According to him, it was Giovanni Brusca who made all the decisions, “and I feel blamed for a murder, but in my opinion, they should accuse me of kidnapping. I’m not doing this for the sake of 30 years or life imprisonment, it’s a matter of principle. And in the end, they killed him, dissolved him in acid, and I’m the one paying for it? How many injustices do I have to endure?”
During the interrogation, Messina Denaro also talked about an audio message he sent to a patient at the clinic in Palermo where he was being treated for cancer. In the message, he insulted Giovanni Falcone after being stuck in traffic on May 23rd. “I didn’t mean to offend Judge Falcone, I don’t care,” he said. “The point is, I had an issue with that way of commemorating. If it had been Garibaldi instead of the judge, my reaction would have been the same because they can’t block a highway for tens of kilometers: that’s how you make people hate you.”
When asked why he wrote to Bernardo Provenzano, another mafia boss, Messina Denaro replied, “Because when you live a certain kind of life, there comes a point where you have to meet. As a fugitive accused of mafia crimes, where else would we go?” The Chief Prosecutor insisted, “Do you remember what you wrote to Bernardo Provenzano?” Messina Denaro responded, “Yes, more or less. I asked him for favors, and he asked me for favors. There were no murders, that’s for sure.”
He also spoke about his father, Francesco Messina Denaro, whom he described as an “art dealer.” “I live well, thanks to my family. My father was an art dealer. I am passionate about ancient history, from Rome and beyond,” the mafia boss shared with the magistrates. “My father used to buy about 100% of the artwork excavated in Selinunte (an archaeological site in Trapani). Then, he sold them in Switzerland, and from there, they went to various places like Arabia and the Emirates. We would see things that passed through my father in American museums.”
