Former Italian mafia top boss Provenzano dies

Long-time boss of the Italian mafia Bernardo Provenzano died on Wednesday, local authorities said.

Provenzano, 83, was transferred to a prison hospital ward in Milan in April 2014, due to severe health conditions, according to Italian penitentiary police.

He had been in a maximum security prison in the northern city of Parma since 2006, when he was captured after some 43 years of being a fugitive.

His hiding, during which he never stopped playing a leading role in the criminal organization, was the longest in the history of the mafia in Italy.

Provenzano ruled over the Sicilian mob, or Cosa Nostra, since the early 1990s, replacing boss Salvatore Riina after his arrest.

He had been given three life terms for several murders, including those of major anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, both killed in 1992.

He always refused to cooperate with Italy's justice system, and served life under so-called 41-bis prison regime, which is a special provision of the Italian penal code involving tougher jail conditions and semi-isolation for mafia members.

Provenzano's lawyer had asked Italian judiciary authorities to cancel the special prison conditions, and suspend his sentence, due to his deteriorating health condition in recent years, according to Ansa news agency.

The request was always refused.

Director-General of the detainees at the ministry of justice Roberto Piscitello, however, told local media that "the 41-bis regime did not worsen Provenzano's health conditions in any way."

"The two hospitals in Parma and Milan, where he has been imprisoned, provided him with timely and effective care," Ansa cited the magistrate has saying.

Various ongoing trials in which the former mafia boss was still a defendant had been suspended lately, because multiple medical reports stated he was unable to follow proceedings due to severe cognitive impairment.

Provenzano was born in the small town of Corleone, in the heart of Sicily, in 1933, and was believed to have joined the Sicilian mafia when he was in his late teens.

He began climbing the ranks in the 1950s, along with other fellow mobsters also set to become leading figures of the organization: Riina, and Calogero Bagarella.

Between the late 1970s and the 1980s, Provenzano and Riina indisputably became the top two figures of Sicily's mafia.

The former was accredited as "the strategic mind" presiding over Cosa Nostra's business and connections with corrupted politicians, while the latter led its military wing, according to senior Italian mafia reporters.

Provenzano will be buried in Sicily, and no public funeral ceremony will be allowed, La Repubblica newspaper cited the police chief in the regional capital Palermo as saying. Endit