Jailed mafia superboss Matteo Messina
Denaro did not appear at a trial hearing in the Sicilian town of
Caltanissetta on Thursday after his lawyer and niece Lorenza
Guttadauro quit on Wednesday.
60-year-old Messina Denaro, who was arrested at a private cancer
clinic in Palermo in January after 30 years on the run, had not
appointed another lawyer, the presiding judge said.
Denaro had been due to appear via video link from the
maximum-security prison in L'Aquila where he is being held.
Calogero Montante has been appointed as his ex officio lawyer.
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.
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