In January, one of the most influential bosses of the Italian mafia, Matteo Messina, was detained. The police spoke about the details of the operation.
As it turned out, a note written with the help of a special Cosa Nostra code and hidden in the leg of a chair in his sister's house helped to detain Matteo Messina Denaro. This is stated in the Italian police warrant for the arrest of 67-year-old Rosalia Messina Denaro.
The police found the encrypted note
Law enforcement officers found a note during a special operation in the house of the sister of the mafia in the Sicilian commune of Castelvetrano. One of the cops went to her house undercover to install a listening device and found a note folded inside an aluminum chair leg.
He photographed the note, which turned out to be a so-called “pizzino” – a message written in a cipher used by the mafia to communicate at high levels. Matteo Denaro communicated through notes with family and friends.
It turned out that the note contains a story about how Denaro is fighting colon cancer. Law enforcement officers have established that it is about Matteo Denaro, since none of the members of the Denaro family is being treated for this type of cancer.
Recall that on January 16, Denaro was detained in a private clinic in the capital of Sicily, Palermo. He was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for his role in the 1993 murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
My sister was also arrested
The investigation believes that Rosalia, Denaro's oldest sister, helped her brother hide from the investigation for years and, in addition, took on financial matters and helped Denaro keep in touch with members of the group during the period when he had to hide for a long time.
The judge in charge of the case, Alfredo Montalto, asked for a measure of restraint. Several divisions of the Italian security forces were involved in the arrest operation. In parallel, dozens of searches were carried out in the province of Trapani.
