Mafia boss’s lawyer asks EU court to revoke ’41-bis’
(ANSA) – Palermo, November 5 – The lawyer of Bernardo Provenzano submitted an appeal Tuesday to the European Court of Human Rights to release the former Mafia kingpin from an inflexible prison sentence for health reasons.
Provenzano, 80, who is suffering from Parkinson’s and related disorders, was ordered by an Italian court in October to remain in isolation and observe other strict provisions of a law known as 41-bis.
His lawyer, Rosalba Di Gregorio, said sarcastically that she was making recourse to the Strasbourg court ”since I am not fortunate enough to have an anorexic client with small children, even though Provenzano has been unable to feed himself for months and is fed intravenously”. The remark was aimed at Justice Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri, grilled by both houses of the parliament Tuesday over allegations she freed an anorexic family acquaintance from jail and moved her to house arrest. The urgent appeal is part of judicial proceedings initiated by the lawyer at the European Court of Human Rights asking for Italy to be condemned for the ‘inhumane’ treatment of the former Mafia ‘boss of bosses’.
Arrested in 2006 after 43 years on the run, Provenzano has been subjected to the 41-bis treatment for Italy’s most dangerous criminals ever since.
They can be kept in single-person cells in maximum-security jails, almost entirely cut off from the outside world in order to prevent further criminal activity.
The ex-mafia chieftain, once nicknamed ‘The Bulldozer’ because of the way he ”mowed down” rivals, is serving life for various murders including ordering fatal bomb attacks on anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992.