Mafia’s ‘Beast’ Jailed for Life in Sicily
Salvatore (Toto) Riina, the Mafia boss who evaded police for nearly a quarter of a century, was imprisoned for life by a Palermo court Friday.
The court convicted the crime chief of ordering the murders of two members of a rival clan in 1989. It also stripped him of his legal rights over his four children.
The sentence was read to Riina as he stood in a bulletproof glass cage in a heavily fortified courtroom in Palermo’s Ucciardone Prison.
Magistrates have accused Riina, known as “The Beast,” of ordering some of the Mafia’s worst outrages and being responsible for clan warfare in which hundreds of people were killed in the 1980s.
But although he had been sentenced to life in prison several times in absentia in other trials during his 23 years on the run, this was his first conviction since he was arrested Jan. 15 in the Sicilian capital.
The court convicted him of ordering the murders of Vincenzo and Pietro Puccio, brothers who he believed had cooperated with the authorities.
They were killed within minutes of each other in different places May 11, 1989.
Vincenzo was clubbed to death with a heavy steak pan in a cell in Ucciardone Prison, and Pietro was murdered while at work in a cemetery.
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