The autopsy on the body of one-time
top Cosa Nostra fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro, who died in a
hospital in L'Aquila early on Monday aged 62, is due to begin at
lunchtime on Tuesday, sources have said.
It will be carried out by forensic pathologist Cristian
D'Ovidio, a professor at Chieti university, the sources added.
After the autopsy, the body of the last godfather of the
Sicilian mafia who spent 30 years on the run before being caught
in a Palermo cancer clinic on January 16, will be transported by
road to Sicily via a special route amid tight security.
The coffin is expected to arrive in Messina Denaro's native
Castelvetrano in the province of Trapani on Wednesday.
The superboss, who was diagnosed with colon cancer while in
hiding in late 2020, had been in San Salvatore hospital since
August 8 following a deterioration in his condition.
Before that Messina Denaro had been held at L'Aquila's
maximum-security prison under the tough 41 bis since January 17,
the day after he was arrested in the Sicilian regional capital.
On Friday, he went into an irreversible coma and doctors
treating him decided to withdraw his clinical nutrition on the
basis of his living will rejecting dysthanasia.
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.
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.
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