New blow to the network of supporters who covered the absence of Matteo Messina Denaro . The ROS carabinieri arrested Antonino Luppino and Vincenzo Luppino, sons of the Campobello di Mazara entrepreneur Giovanni Luppino, the man who was the mafia boss's driver and who ended up in handcuffs with him on January 16th a year ago.
They are accused of aiding and abetting and aggravated failure to comply with the sentence.
According to the prosecution, the Luppinos provided the boss with "precious help" in moving around the area where Messina Denaro lived . From 2018 to 2022, the two brothers lived a few meters from the godfather's last hideout in Campobello di Mazara.
Antonino Luppino had been given the number of one of the cell phones used by the boss, Vincenzo Luppino would have gone to the La Maddalena clinic, where the wanted man was being treated for cancer, when he was operated on, to take care of his needs. And again Antonino Luppino, together with his father, would have escorted Messina Denaro, after his resignation from the nursing home, on 11 May, to Campobello and together with his brother he would have taken care of the repairs of the car, a Giulietta, with which the mafia boss it moved.
The three would also have followed the renovation work on the hideout and the moving of the boss's furniture to the last hideout.
The investigations also revealed that on 29 December 2022, a few days before the arrest, Messina Denaro drove past the house of his ex-partner, mother of his daughter, and his sisters Bice and Giovanna, in Castelvetrano . Vincenzo Luppino's van followed and escorted him, driven by his father Giovanni.
The boss passed by his parents' house to revisit the places dear to him and in the hope, the investigators think, of being able to see his family members even from afar.
The cameras of the town immortalized the van following the fugitive's Giulietta as it passed at 5.12pm under the house of Franca Alagna, the ex-partner, at 5.15pm under the house of her sister Giovanna and at 5.17pm under that of the other sister Bice. The escort, writes the investigating judge, «provided a sort of relay to the fugitive, «who had to pass through places notoriously subject to exceptional checks by the police» .
(Unioneonline/L)
