The sister of Matteo Messina Denaro, who was arrested last week for helping her mobster brother evade Italian justice for 30 years, on Monday used her right to remain silent in her first appearance before a judge.
Rosalia Messina Denaro, who will turn 68 on March 12, was
arrested Friday for mafia association in helping her 60-year-old
brother, Italy's most wanted man, run his operations from hiding
by managing money and handing on 'pizzini' orders from the Cosa
Nostra superboss.
The woman was interviewed by a preliminary investigations judge
in Palermo's Pagliarelli Prison.
Her brother is continuing cancer treatment in a maximum-security
jail in L'Aquila, the Abruzzo capital.
He was caught at a Palermo clinic on January 16.
The long-awaited arrest, a feather in the cap of Italian
police's special Carabinieri ROS unit, came after a pizzino was
discovered in the hollow leg of a chair at Rosalia Messina
Denaro's house at Castevetrano near Trapani, near which her
brother had been hiding out virtuallin plain sight for all these
years, thanks to widespread complicity and omertà.
Rosalia is the eldest of the mobster's four sisters.
In one of the notes discovered Friday he disowned a daughter as
a "degenerate".
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