Mafia boss thanks Trump in memoir for taking on journalists
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A late Sicilian mafia boss thanked Donald Trump for taking on journalists in memoirs discovered upon his arrest.
Matteo Messina Denaro, who was captured after three decades on the run and died nine months later, quoted the former US president’s 2017 claim that reporters “are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth”.
“Honour to you, Trump, for having thought it and most of all for having said it … Thanks, you made me feel less lonely,” Messina Denaro wrote in an excerpt of the diaries published by Italian daily Corriere della Sera.
Italian police found three secret diaries kept by the Cosa Nostra boss after his arrest in January 2023 in Palermo.
They were intended to be a record of his life for his daughter Lorenza. The pair were estranged until she visited him in prison last year and agreed to take the Messina Denaro surname before he died of colon cancer aged 61.
While on the run from police, Messina Denaro was convicted of more than 50 murders.
He was eventually captured in an undercover operation that ensnared him while he was visiting a private hospital for chemotherapy treatment, using a fake name.
Nicknamed “Diabolik” or “U siccu”, the Thin One, Messina Denaro became “u capu di ’i capi”, or the “boss of bosses”, after the 2006 arrest of Bernardo “U Tratturi” (the Tractor) Provenzano, the former head of the Cosa Nostra.
During interrogations after his arrest, Messina Denaro denied having any affiliation with Cosa Nostra, let alone serving as the boss of the Sicilian crime syndicate depicted in The Godfather movies.
Instead, he depicted himself in his diaries as a victim of politically motivated judges and journalists.
“The [jail] sentences against me have been determined by politics and journalistic campaigns,” he wrote.
However, the excerpts contain several references to mafia culture and suggest he was destined to lead a criminal life as the son of another important mafia figure.
“In the environment in which I was born and grew up, weapons represented an important educational moment of life,” Messina Denaro wrote.
In another excerpt, the mafia boss wrote: “If you don’t succeed in winning with words, embrace weapons.”
“I have never been courteous with people who are holding a sword, I have always looked for a fight,” Messina Denaro added.
The diaries, written during his final years on the run, also indicate Messina Denaro was angry at his daughter for trying to lead a normal life outside of the mafia, but felt guilty about his absence from her life.
“Today I learnt that you have been living, already for some time, in London. Being parents means knowing how to impose limits. Lorenza, be careful that behaving like this, life will crush you,” he wrote in May 2019 in an excerpt published by the La Repubblica newspaper.
“All this is due to the absence/impotence of a father,” he added.
In other excerpts, his mood appeared to be gloomy: “All around me is pitch black, where am I?” he wrote. “In what directions am I heading? I have no clue; I don’t even know why I am alive.”
Messina Denaro added: “When I was 16, I knew what I wanted and where I was going. Instead, today, I don’t know it anymore and that seems a paradox.
“I don’t want to act like a victim, I am not one and will never be one. On the contrary, I feel too good with my folly.
“I would also have too many revenges to take, but I am not that interested in what will happen afterwards. I feel like I am sitting, all alone, at the bottom of the sea.”
