Messina Denaro's driver gets 9 years

 The preliminary hearings judge (GUP) of Palermo ion Wednesday sentenced Giovanni Luppino, the Campobello di Mazara (Trapani) entrepreneur who acted as a driver for the late superboss Matteo Messina Denaro in the last days of his life as a wanted man until his capture after 30 years on the run in January 2023, to nine years for aggravated aiding and abetting.

Luppino, according to the prosecution, represented in court by DDA prosecutors Piero Padova and Gianluca De Leo, also asked for money on behalf of the mafia boss and, together with his sons, who were arrested last February, took care of movements, removals and various organisational aspects of the Castelvetrano godfather's fugitive life until his arrest on January 16 last year.

Messina Denaro was caught 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.