Mafia boss's son jailed

2004-12-31 20:57

Rome - The youngest son of jailed mob boss Toto Riina was sentenced on Friday to 14 years and six months in prison for taking over his father's criminal work, news reports said.

Giuseppe Salvatore Riina was convicted in a court in Palermo, Sicily, on charges of Mafia association and carrying out traditional Mafia activities of money laundering, extortion, and controlling public works contracts, news agency Ansa said.

He was accused of taking over his family's Mafia activities after the jailing of his elder brother and father, "boss of bosses" Toto Riina.

The senior Riina ran the Sicilian Corleone gang, which committed numerous bloody acts in the 1980s and early '90s and was Italy's most notorious and violent.

He was arrested in 1993 during the intensified campaign against the Mafia that followed the killings of two anti-mob prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, and was sentenced to life in prison for those slayings.

Giovanni Riina, another of Toto's sons, was convicted for a string of murders in 2001 and also sentenced to life in prison; the youngest Riina, who was arrested in 2002 at his family's house in Corleone, central Sicily, also faces charges for ordering those same murders in a trial due to start in May.

In one phone conversation tapped by the police, Giuseppe Salvatore Riina was quoted as saying: "Had my father not been arrested, things would have been different, and the state would have given in," according to the AGI news agency.

Judges sentenced four other men being tried alongside Riina to prison terms of up to nine years and 10 months, while acquitting a sixth suspect, ANSA said.

The defendants and their relations shouted insults at the panel of judges after the sentences were read out in the Palermo courtroom, ANSA said.

- AP