'I am a stateless farmer' says Messina Denaro

(ANSA) - ROME, MAY 9 - Jailed mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro claims to be a "stateless farmer" according to case documents made public on Tuesday.
    "My name is Matteo Messina Denaro, I used to work in the countryside and I was a farmer. I no longer have a residence because the municipality cancelled it. I am now stateless," said Messina Denaro during an interrogation on February 21.
    Asked about his economic situation, the Cosa Nostra kingpin who was Italy's most wanted man until he was caught at a Palermo cancer clinic on January 16 after 30 years on the run, said he "lacked nothing".
    "I had property assets, but you took them all away," he added.
    "I'm not going to say if I still have something, it's not like I'm stupid," said Messina Denaro, 60.
    The Trapani superboss has been condemned to life in prison in absentia for his involvement in dozens of murders, including the 1992 bombings that killed anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, 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.
    Following his arrest in January, he is now being treated for cancer in a special chemotherapy facility that has been set up in a maximum-security prison at L'Aquila in Abruzzo.
    However, the interrogation made public on Tuesday was in connection with criminal proceedings over charges of aggravated extortion. (ANSA).