Ancient artifacts seized from Messina Denaro dealer

(ANSA) - ROME, JUN 14 - A trove of ancient artifacts was seized from an art dealer close to late Mafia superboss Matteo Messina Denaro in Trapani Friday.
    The Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate executed a seizure decree issued by the Court of Trapani, concerning goods protected by historical, artistic and archaeological interest.
    In particular, the decree concerns several late Roman amphorae and a marble base depicting mythological scenes sculpted on all sides, dating back to the Hellenistic-Roman period, all considered to be of considerable value, belonging to the international art dealer.
    Messina Denaro was caught in mid-January last year after 30 years on the run while leaving a clinic where he was being treated for cancer in Palermo.
    He died in a hospital in L'Aquila on September 25 aged 62.
    Messina Denaro had been convicted for his involvement in dozens of murders, including the 1992 Cosa Nostra bombings that killed anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
    He was also convicted of the killing of Giuseppe Di Matteo, the 12-year-old son of a mobster-turned-State witness who was strangled and dissolved in acid in 1996, and bombings at art and religious sites in Milan, Florence and Rome that killed 10 people and hurt 40 more in 1993.
    Long idolised by younger mafiosi for his ruthlessness and playboy-like charisma,, Messina Denaro sealed a reputation for brutality by murdering a rival Trapani boss and strangling his three-months-pregnant girlfriend.
    The boss, who reportedly enjoyed orgies with Palermo women while on the run, once said he could have filled a cemetery with those he had killed.
    He was reportedly helped dodge police by a "middle class Mafia", not only around his fief at Trapani but also around Sicily, Italian police have said. (ANSA).