Sisa Mafia Boss Sissina Denaro Sentenced To 14 Years In Prison

Police at the Vatican/UNSPLASH/Marquise de Photographie

PALERMO - The oldest sister of the late Sisilia Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro was sentenced to 14 years in prison in a mafia association case and received stolen goods.

Messina Denaro was Italy's most wanted person to be arrested in January last year. He has spent three decades on the run, in which he was found guilty of several murders, and died of cancer last September.

Reported by Reuters on Thursday, July 11, his sister, Rosalia, was arrested in March 2023, and tried for charges by prosecutors covering up his fugitive brother, managing his finances, and helping him relate to the outside world.

The 69-year-old woman was found guilty in the first-degree verdict in Palermo, the capital of Sicily. According to Italian law, the ruling could be appealed twice before becoming a final.

On the run, Messina Denaro followed the mafia's tradition of communicating with relatives and affiliates through "pizzini", a small piece of paper containing commands and instructions, sometimes written in code. Police found some of them at her sister's house.

The mafia went into hiding in 1993 as more and more traitors began providing details of its involvement in mafia crimes, including helping to plan the assassination of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992.

Nicknamed "U Siccu" (the thin one), Messina Denaro is the son of a mafioso and a close ally of Salvatore "the Beast" Riina, who is the undisputed "boss of the bosses" of "Cosa Nostra", the Sicily gang.