1993 Bombings
After bomb attacks in Capaci and Via D’Amelio that killed prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the arrest of Salvatore Riina on January 15, 1993 and the introduction of strict prison regime (article 41-bis), Cosa Nostra embarked on a terrorist campaign in which Matteo Messina Denaro played a prominent role.
The remaining Mafia bosses, among them Matteo Messina Denaro, Giovanni Brusca, Leoluca Bagarella, Antonino Gioè, Giuseppe Graviano and Gioacchino La Barbera, met several times (often in the Santa Flavia area in Bagheria on an estate owned by the mafioso Leonardo Greco). They decided on a strategy to force the Italian state to retreat. That resulted in a series of bomb attacks in the Via dei Georgofili in Florence, in Via Palestro in Milan, in the Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano and Via San Teodoro in Rome, which left 10 people dead and 93 injured as well as damage to centres of cultural heritage such as the Uffizi Gallery.
Messina Denaro also tailed the TV-journalist Maurizio Costanzo, host of the Maurizio Costanzo Show, who just escaped a car-bomb attack on May 14, 1993. Apparently he also observed the movements of Giovanni Falcone and the Minister of Justice, Claudio Martelli, in 1991. After the 1993 bombings Messina Denaro went into hiding and has not been seen since. On May 6, 2002, he received a life-time sentence (in absentia) for his role in the terrorist attacks of 1993.
In June 2000, a law enforcement operation led to the arrest of several individuals who assisted the fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro and discovered two residences where he had found shelter. One of these residences was located in an area of the city of Bagheria (in the province of Palermo), while the other was in the Brancaccio area of Palermo. Since one of the main rules within the Mafia is that a fugitive should hide in a friendly area, there is reason to believe that Messina Denaro has a good relationship to both Provenzano and the Gravianos.
Read more about this topic: Matteo Messina Denaro