Italy’s most wanted mob boss Matteo Messina Denaro, who was captured in January after being on the run for 30 years, has been in an irreversible coma since Friday, DPA reported, citing the ANSA news agency.
He is suffering from colon cancer and according to his doctors, Messina Denaro will not be able to recover. At his request, the measures to support his life have been suspended, doctors from the hospital in the central Italian city of Aquila announced, vesti.bg reports.
In early August, the 61-year-old mobster underwent bowel surgery at the San Salvatore Hospital in Aquila. Although the operation was successful, the advanced stage of the colon cancer led to an irreversible deterioration of his health.
On Friday, he suffered a significant hemorrhage and shortly thereafter fell into an irreversible coma, ANSA said.
Matteo Messina Denaro, the convicted head of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra mafia, was captured by police in January after three decades on the run. The mafia boss, long considered Italy’s most wanted fugitive, was captured by a specialist police unit at a cancer clinic in Palermo where he was being treated under a false name.
He was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for his role in a series of gruesome murders and car bombings in Italy. Among other crimes, he was accused of the 1992 car bombings that killed leading anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, among others.
Denaro is believed to be a close confidant of former Mafia crime bosses Bernardo Provenzano and Salvatore Riina.
