Carabinieri police on Tuesday arrested
Martina Gentile, the daughter of Matteo Messina Denaro's lover,
as the authorities continue to put the squeeze on the people who
helped the late Cosa Nostra boss during the 30 years he spent as
a fugitive to Italian justice.
Gentile is the daughter of Laura Bonafede, a teacher who was in
a relationship with Messina Denaro for many years.
The mobster is said to have considered Gentile like a daughter
and she is thought to hold many of his secrets.
A judge had previously turned down a request from prosecutors
for Gentile to be held in jail on remand.
But on Tuesday a court granted a petition for her to be put
under house arrest on the basis of new material presented by the
Carabinieri.
Messina Denaro died in a hospital in L'Aquila in September aged
62 after a battle with cancer.
The last godfather of the Sicilian mafia's long spell on the run
ended when he was caught in a Palermo cancer clinic on January
16.
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 was
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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