Court Hearing for Dr. Alfonso Tumbarello on Charges of Mafia Association and Document Fraud

 This afternoon, in front of the Marsala Court, the trial of Dr. Alfonso Tumbarello, 71, a former general practitioner from Campobello di Mazara, took place. He is accused of external complicity in a mafia association and falsifying public documents. Tumbarello is charged with issuing over one hundred thirty certificates in the name of "Andrea Bonafede" (born in '63), who lent his identity to the boss, to allow the Castelvetrano mafia leader Matteo Messina Denaro, who died on September 25, to receive treatment for cancer.

Responding to questions from the prosecutor of the DDA of Palermo, Gianluca De Leo, the presiding judge, Vito Marcello Saladino, and his lawyers, Gioacchino Sbacchi and Giuseppe Pantaleo, Tumbarello stated that he had never seen Matteo Messina Denaro. "Had it happened," he declared, "I would have immediately gone to the authorities."

Dr. Tumbarello explained that he had known Andrea Bonafede since 2018, when the latter became his patient after his previous general practitioner had retired. "I've known him for many years, but we are not friends. One day he came to me to show me the results of a colonoscopy." Tumbarello added that Bonafede told him that a cousin of the same name, born in '69, would pick up subsequent medical prescriptions because he did not want his family to know about his illness.

"I did not examine Andrea Bonafede," Tumbarello continued, "because it was pointless in front of the results of a colonoscopy."

Prosecutor De Leo asked Tumbarello how he acted as an intermediary for a meeting between Salvatore Messina Denaro, Matteo's brother, and the former DC mayor of Castelvetrano, Antonio Vaccarino. Tumbarello said, "Vaccarino asked me if I knew Salvatore Messina Denaro and if I could arrange a meeting. I knew Salvatore because, as a pulmonologist, I had been asked to visit his sister-in-law, who could not leave her house. We set the date and time, and they came to my medical office. Since there was no one in the waiting room, Vaccarino asked if they could talk there. It seemed rude to say no. I locked my office and left. I returned an hour later and everyone was gone. Vaccarino, with whom I had been acquainted for political reasons for a while, never told me why he wanted that meeting, nor did I ask him. I found out years later from the newspapers."