Ailing former Cosa Nostra superboss Salvatore (Toto') Riina has asked that he be granted house arrest inside a hospital because of his failing health, his lawyers said on Wednesday.
The lawyers said that they had also asked once again that the tough conditions of his incarceration be lifted so he can have greater visiting rights with his family.
A parole board will examine the requests in a hearing on October 12.
This is not the first time that the 77-year-old mobster, also known as 'The Beast', has asked that he be taken out of the very strict jail conditions envisaged by article '41-bis' of Italy's criminal code for dangerous Mafia bosses, terrorists and modern-day 'slave traders'.
Last October a similar request was turned down, as was one a year earlier.
Riina, who is serving out 12 life sentences at Milan's high security Opera Prison, has had three heart bypasses and is reported to be suffering from back and thyroid problems.
Until his arrest in 1993, Riina was the Mafia's leading don. He was convicted of a range of crimes including ordering the car-bombings that killed anti-Mob magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992.
Inmates subject to 41-bis prison treatment can be kept in single-person cells in maximum-security jails, almost entirely cut off from the outside world.
They are not permitted to buy anything or to receive parcels but they can spend up to four hours a day in the open air and are allowed to mix with five other inmates at a time.
Some 650 prison inmates are currently subject to 41-bis but cases sometimes occur where prisoners have been found to have continued running their affairs from the inside.
The 41-bis was introduced in 1992 as a temporary measure designed to help cope with a Mafia emergency.
In 2002, the measure became a permanent fixture in the penal code.
Amnesty International, the London-based human-rights group, has expressed concern that the 41-bis regime could in some circumstances amount to "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment" for prisoners.
