Cosa Nostra Mafia 'boss' Totò Riina issued further threats against Palermo deputy prosecutor Nino Di Matteo from prison. He was intercepted while talking to another jailed mobster from the Sacra Corona Unita during the out-of-cell time.
In mid-November he had already issued threats from his prison cell during hearings into an alleged deal between mobsters and the Italian government in the 1990s.
Italian daily La Repubblica quoted a prison guard as saying Riina shouted "Di Matteo must die ... they're making me crazy," as he watched a video of the trial in Palermo.
Riina is in a maximum-security prison in Milan for a number of crimes, including the bombing assassinations of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992 and 1993. Their murders were among the crimes that allegedly induced the State to enter the secret talks with Cosa Nostra in a bid to stop attacks after a long campaign of violence.
Police considered moving Di Matteo and his family as a result of the threats, but decided instead to reinforce their personal security and those of other judges exposed to threats.
They are also considering the use of a so-called 'bomb jammer', a blocking device to prevent remote-controlled bombs being detonated at a distance, in the future, but more research on the impact of these devices on human health is needed first.
Many Italians have shown prosecutor Di Matteo their full support even on social media, though more attention is needed to make sure Italy does not fall back into the nightmare of the Mafia massacres of the 1990s.
