(ANSA) - Parole judges rejected on Wednesday a bid to obtain softer prison conditions by jailed 'boss of bosses' Salvatore (Toto') Riina. The judges also threw out a separate request that Riina be granted house arrest for health reasons.
Lawyers acting for 75-year-old Riina, who is serving 12 life sentences for a string of ferocious crimes, had asked for their client's tough prison regime to be lifted. Riina, who has had three bypasses, is currently being held at a high-security Milan prison. He has repeatedly requested easier prison conditions because of his poor health and the alleged "inhumanity" of the jail conditions prescribed for top mafiosi.
His last appeal was thrown out by parole judges in November 2004.
Last February, his lawyers filed their request for house arrest, highlighting Riina's recent operation for disc problems and his history of heart and thyroid problems. Until his arrest in 1993, Toto 'the Beast' Riina was a leading Mafia don. He was convicted of a range of crimes including ordering the car-bombings that killed anti-Mob magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
He is subject to very strict jail conditions envisaged by article '41-bis' of Italy's criminal code for dangerous Mafia bosses, terrorists and modern-day 'slave traders'. Such prisoners 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. Almost 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.
Last year, jailed Vito and Leonardo Vitale, who are close to fugitive superboss Bernardo Provenzano, were discovered to be communicating with each other and sending orders to members of their crime family on the outside. Investigators said the two brothers sent out commands regarding the management of public works contracts in Sicily and protection money payments from local businesses. Leonardo Vitale was even able to send faxes to his wife and family with encoded messages.
Shocked lawmakers said the incident showed that the 41-bis was not strict enough. The 41-bis was introduced in 1992 as a temporary measure designed to help cope with a Mafia emergency at the time.
In 2002, Premier Silvio Berlusconi's government made the measure a permanent fixture in the penal code. In July of the same year, Leoluca Bagarella, a convicted Mafia head and brother-in-law of Riina, suggested unnamed politicians had failed to maintain agreements with the Mafia over prison conditions.
"We are tired of being exploited, humiliated, harassed and used as merchandise by political factions", Bagarella said during a court appearance. Berlusconi subsequently confirmed the centre-right administration's intention of extending 41-bis until 2006, saying that the government would not bow to threats from Mafia bosses.
Former interior ministry undersecretary Carlo Taormina, a Mafia defence lawyer who was forced to resign after repeated attacks on the Italian magistrature, has called for 41-bis to be abolished. According to Taormina, the tough prison system is "an
instrument of torture and is unworthy of a civilised country because it reduces inmates to the state of beasts."
Amnesty International, the London-based human-rights group, has also expressed concern that the 41-bis regime could in some circumstances amount to "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment" for prisoners.
