Sixty-one-year-old ex-mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, who was arrested in Palermo last January, is in an irreversible, comatose state.

The news was made known by his niece, who is also his defense attorney. Among others, Denaro is accused of being the mastermind of explosions that took place in the nineties in Florence, Milan and Rome, as well as the murders of judges Paolo Borcellino and Giovanni Falcone in 1992.

He has long been suffering from colon cancer and when he was arrested, the former Cosa Nostra leader was outside a private clinic in Palermo. He did not repent of his past and stated, in fact, that “if he had not been sick, he would never have been caught”.

As it became known, respecting his will, the doctors stopped feeding him through a tube.