‘Beast’ freedom fury
Sicilian boss had boy dissolved in acid
A ruthless Sicilian mob boss known as “The Beast” — who once ordered a hit on Rudy Giuliani and had a 13-year-old boy dissolved in acid — could soon be sprung from an Italian prison so he can “die with dignity.”
Politicians, prosecutors and cops have been fuming since Italy’s supreme court said on Monday that Salvatore “The Beast” Riina (inset) — who suffers from cancer, heart disease and Parkinson’s disease — should be freed.
Riina, 86, has “the right to die with dignity,” the justices said.
The final decision on Riina’s freedom will come from the parole board in Bologna, near Parma, where the gang boss is locked up.
Chief Mafia prosecutor Franco Roberti said Riina still poses a threat to society.
“We have evidence to prove this theory [that Riina is harmless] wrong and show that Riina is still the head of La Cosa Nostra,” Roberti told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
For years, Riina was also known as the Sicilian Mafia’s “Boss of all Bosses.”
Riina was finally busted in 1993 and is now serving 12 concurrent life sentences.
But from behind bars, he notoriously ordered the murder of the youngster, who was strangled before his body was dissolved in a vat of acid in 1996.
The cowardly hit — one of some 150 murders to which Riina has been linked — was in retaliation for the boy’s dad having ratted out the mob boss.
Riina also once ordered the murder of then-US Attorney Giuliani in the 1980s, associates have said.
Riina went as far as sending an assassin to the United States to mur- der the future mayor because of Giuliani’s friendship with crusading Italian judge Giovanni Falcone.
But Riina changed his mind, fearing US attacks on the Sicilian mob.
Falcone, and another courageous anti-Mafia judge, Paolo Borsellino, were killed on Riina’s orders in 1992.
Salvatore Borsellino, the slain judge’s brother, was outraged that Italy’s high court could give Riina the benefit of the doubt.
“The court should have remembered that the person before them is the same one who blew to bits servants of the state and ordered that a little boy be dissolved in acid,” he said.