John Dickie

Inserted 1 year ago

“He [Matteo Messina Denaro] was the youngest member of a leadership group within the Sicilian mafia that took control of the Sicilian mafia in the early 1980s, essentially by massacring all their rivals, and then mounted a major attack on the Italian state. All of this was aimed at trying to get the state to back down from a major onslaught against organised crime that had been gaining momentum … [but] that onslaught has continued and Messina Denaro was the last of that leadership group still at large. [His arrest] is a very important symbolic gesture which shows that ultimately the state will win, and the state is winning in the case of the Sicilian mafia.”

Aljazeera

Professor of Italian studies at University College London and an expert on the mafia