Cosa Nostra's elusive superboss Bernardo Provenzano is alive and kicking, police said Friday, flatly contradicting a lawyer's claim he was dead.
In an interview in Friday's La Republica, long-time Provenzano attorney Salvatore Traina said the shadowy boss had been dead "for years". He claimed the Mafia had deliberately created a "ghost" to take the rap for their most serious crimes.
"They've been hunting him for years with the most sophisticated instruments available and they still haven't found him. Can that be possible?," Traina said of his client, who has been on the run for 43 years. The lawyer also called into question DNA evidence taken at a French clinic the boss secretly visited in 2003. "How they do know it was really him? The investigators
say they have the DNA but I think they've got nothing".
Anti-Mafia prosecutors in Palermo issued a sweeping denial of Traina's claims Friday.
They called the assertion that he was dead "absolutely groundless."
As for the DNA taken at the Marseilles clinic, they noted that a comparison with DNA from Provenzano's brother "left no doubt as to the genetic compatibility". "It simply isn't plausible that Provenzano is dead," said anti-Mafia prosecutor Maurizio De Lucia.
"The French tests established without doubt that the person operated on was Provenzano. Recent investigations have confirmed he is alive". Traina's credibility suffered a further blow when it emerged that the boss's relatives dispensed with his services a few years ago when he neglected to file an appeal against a conviction for the 1992 murder of Italy's best-known anti-Mafia crusader Giovanni Falcone.
Traina's claims came out on the same day as a new film about Provenzano entitled The Ghost of Corleone in which director Marco Amenta suggests rogue politicians and police helped the boss hide in return for certain "services". Italy's new Anti-Mafia chief Piero Grasso has voiced suspicions about the way Provenzano has continually slipped out of the police's grasp - presumably because of last-minute tip-offs.
But he has also expressed optimism that the 72-year-old superboss will soon fall into the police net. Up until recently Provenzano's whereabouts and even his physical appearance were shrouded in mystery.
Investigators got a break when they learned that he had travelled to the Marseilles clinic for prostate surgery under an assumed name. They then arrested the Sicilian politician who obtained identity papers for the fugitive and he later turned state's witness.
Thanks to the medical file kept at the clinic, investigators were able to determine that Provenzano is 165 cm tall, weighs 68 kilos and has a scar on his neck - the result of a previous operation to remove a cyst. Information offered by doctors and nurses at the clinic allowed computer experts to construct a more accurate identikit image of the fugitive.
Until then all police had to go on was a photograph taken over 40 years ago for Provenzano's identity card, before he went on the run. Investigators agree that Provenzano is indisputably the supreme head of Cosa Nostra, which he took full control of in
January 1993 after the organisation's 'boss of bosses' Salvatore (Toto') Riina was arrested.
