Apr 24 2008
Pop-art mural of fugitive Mafia boss in Palermo
Palermo, — A colourful pop-art style mural of fugitive Sicilian Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro has appeared in the centre of Palermo - just metres from the cathedral.
The mural is made up of four different coloured images of a youthful Messina Denaro, resembling US pop artist Andy Warhol’s iconic prints of Marilyn Monroe.
A row of dollar signs is drawn beneath the mural and graffiti reading “Messina Denaro - The Last One!” with more dollar signs are daubed in red paint beside it. The initials ‘F.A.’ possibly those of the artist - are written in a circle above.
“The mural ’s prominent position in central Palermo, as if it were a normal piece of pop art rather than an image of one of the most wanted, powerful and dangerous Mafia fugitives alive today is serious and disturbing,”said Italian conservative senator Carlo Vizzini.
“It is disquieting that Messina Denaro gets treated like a Hollywood movie star and a person to emulate.”
“This shows the uphill struggle we face in bringing about the change in mentalities needed to defeat the Mafia,” Vizzini said.
Messina Denaro, 44, head of the Mafia crime syndicate in the western Sicilian port city of Trapani, has been on the run since 1993. He is considered to be one of the new leaders of the Sicilian Mafia after the arrest of jailed Mafia ‘boss of bosses’ Bernardo Provenzano in 2006.
Born into a Mafia family near Trapani, he gained notoriety by murdering rival boss Vincenzo Milazzo and strangling Milazzo’s three-months pregnant girlfriend.
A reported womaniser and lover of the high-life, Messina Denaro is believed to run an extensive extortion racket in Sicily which has links to Colombian drug trafficking cartels, the Calabrian Mafia (the ‘Ndrangheta) and Mafia families in Palermo.
Messina Denaro, also known by the nickname Diabolik taken from a comic book character, has been sentenced in absentia to life in jail for his role in Mafia bombings in Rome, Florence and Milan.
Pop-art mural of fugitive Mafia boss in Palermo - 24 April 2008 - AKI - http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.2104043889
