Messina Denaro in intensive care - prison ombudsman

(ANSA) - ROME, AUG 9 - Jailed Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro is in intensive care in hospital in the city of L'Aquila after undergoing surgery on Tuesday, Abruzzo's prisons ombudsman Gianmarco Cifaldi said on Wednesday.
    "Matteo Messina Denaro has woken up after the operation, which went very well," Cifaldi said of the cancer-suffering inmate.
    "He is conscious and active.
    "He is in intensive care, which is simply standard procedure after an operation of the kind".
    On Tuesday the mobster's lawyer Alessandro Cerella said the 61-year-old's health condition "has deteriorated" and it is "not compatible" with the tough 41 bis jail regime he was being held under.
    He was taken from L'Aquila's maximum-security jail and to the city's San Salvatore hospital for the operation on Tuesday.
    "The (length of) the hospital stay depends on a combination of factors, from the health consultations to the assessments of the penitentiary department on the necessary actions to guarantee internal and external security," Cifaldi said.
    "All actions are aimed at guaranteeing the Constitutional rights of both the boss and all free people".
    When asked about whether Messina Denaro should continue to be held in the 41 bis regime, Cifaldi replied: "we guarantee the right to health with qualified medical personnel and all the agencies of the State are working in compliance with the Constitution, including me".
    Messina Denaro was caught in mid-January at a Palermo cancer clinic after 30 years on the run.
    The Cosa Nostra superboss has been convicted for his involvement in dozens of murders, including the 1992 bombings that killed anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
    In addition to the Falcone and Borsellino assassinations, he has been condemned for 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.
    On Tuesday the transcription of his questioning with prosecutors after his arrest was deposited.
    During the questioning he said would never turn State witness, that he learned about the existence of the Mafia from the newspapers and that the police had only managed to capture him because of his illness.
    He also denied having killed Giuseppe Di Matteo. (ANSA).