Matteo Messina Denaro's sister
Rosalia was found guilty of helping the late fugitive Cosa
Nostra superboss during his 30-year run from justice by a judge
in Palermo on Thursday and given a 14-year prison sentence at
the end of a fast-track trial.
The woman has been in prison since March last year.
According to investigators, she helped her brother evade capture
and managed on his behalf the 'cash box' of the mafia 'family'
and the transmission network of the 'pizzini' (orders), thus
allowing the mafia leader to maintain relations with his men
during his long period on the run.
Messina Denaro was caught in mid-January last year while leaving
a clinic where he was being treated for cancer in Palermo.
He died in a hospital in L'Aquila on September 25 aged 62.
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
convicted of 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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