Rome, Nov 17 : The former "boss of bosses" of the Cosa Nostra -- Sicily's notorious mafia -- who was believed to have been responsible for over 150 murders died at a hospital in Italy on Friday, leaving behind a blood-soaked legacy of violence and organised crime.
Salvatore "Totò" Riina -- also known by the nicknames "u Curtu" ("The Short) and "la Belva" ("The Beast") -- passed away at 3.37 a.m. in Parma at the age of 87 after two surgeries and five days in a state of coma, Efe news reported.
"Riina's end is not the end of the Sicilian mafia, which remains a highly dangerous criminal system," warned Rosy Bindi, President of the Italian parliament's anti-mafia commission.
"We still have a duty to search for the truths Riina has hidden all these years and shed light on the massacres he ordered," Bindi said.
The erstwhile "Capo di tutti capi" had spent the past 24 years in prison serving 26 life sentences for the countless murders he either carried out himself or ordered, including the 1992 assassination of Italian anti-mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino that shook the country to its core.
Born in 1930 in the Sicilian town of Corleone, Riina was finally arrested in 1993 after decades of living as a fugitive while pulling the strings of the powerful Corleonesi family, which emerged victorious from the brutal Second Mafia War (late 1970s-80s) that left hundreds of corpses strewn across Italy.
Bindi celebrated the fact that Riina had been "defeated before his death, due to the hard commitment of the institutions and the sacrifice of so many brave and righteous men".
In July, the Bologna penitentiary court dismissed a request to release Riina due to his worsening health condition, which included Parkinson's disease, heart problems and kidney failure, according to his lawyers.
On Thursday night, Italian Justice Minister Andrea Orlando allowed Riina's wife, Ninetta Bagarella, and three of his sons (another one is in jail for Mafia-related crimes) to pay him a final visit at the hospital.
Riina never displayed the slightest hint of remorse or regret, nor did he ever reveal any mafia secrets in court.
Among the victims of Riina's reign of terror were Michele Reina, Palermo's former provincial secretary for the Christian Democracy Party killed in 1979, and the regional president of Sicily, Piersanti Mattarella (the older brother of current Italian President Sergio Mattarella), who was shot inside his car in January 1980.
Riina's last public appearance was by video conference to testify in a court case that sought to determine whether the Italian state had negotiated with the mafia in the 1990s in an attempt to stem the relentless violence.
The Sicilian, however, refused to break the mafiosi code of honour known as "omertà " and took all his secrets with him to the grave.
