The ten sentences imposed on appeal in one of the trial trials resulting from the “Montanari” operation, on a vast drug ring between Messina, Milazzo and Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, become definitive. This is one of the lines of the investigation into the reorganization of the Cosa Nostra in Barcelona conducted by the Messina Anti-Mafia District Directorate and which resulted in the raid by the Carabinieri in February 2022, which involved around 80 people.
The fourth criminal section of the Supreme Court yesterday afternoon in fact rejected all ten appeals presented by the defendants’ lawyers in recent months.
The appeal judges, in Messina, for this part of the maxi proceeding, decided on 20 June 2024. They sentenced Tommaso Pantè to 10 years and 10 months, Alessandro Abbas to 6 years, 9 months and 10 days, Massimo Pirri to 7 years and 8 months, Salvatore Benenati to 7 years and 2 months, Teresa Morici to 6 years, 9 months and 10 days, Maria Concetta Lenzi at 4 years and 6 months (generic mitigating circumstances were granted), Daniele Mazza at 8 years, 5 months and 10 days, Yassine Lakhlifi at 6 months (the concept of “slight entity” was granted), Santo Genovese at 10 months, Elena Sottile at 6 months. All these sentences decided on appeal in 2024 after the rejection of the defense appeals in the Court of Cassation yesterday afternoon have become definitive.
The defendants in the Court of Cassation were defended by lawyers Giampiero Palleschi, Gabriella Caccamo, Cinzia Panebianco, Salvatore Lo Vecchio, Giuseppe Cicciari, Tommaso Autru Ryolo, Giuseppe Ciminata, Salvatore Silvestro, Gaetano Pino, Carmelo Mazzeo and Pinuccio Calabrò. The lawyers Giuseppe Cicciari and Antonietta Pugliese intervened for the civil parties.
This is an excerpt from the mega operation which brought together three lines of investigation managed by the Carabinieri and the Anti-Mafia District Attorney’s Office. The raid began in February 2022, the result of a widespread activity coordinated at the time by the deputy prosecutor Vito Di Giorgio and the three deputies of the DDA Fabrizio Monaco, Antonella Fradà and Francesco Massara, on the “Barcelona” mafia family. A group historically rooted in the territory of Barcelona. The statements of the two new collaborators, the brothers Alessandro and Gabriele Abbas, who for years purchased and sold drugs between Messina, Barcellona and Milazzo, Lipari, Gualtieri Sicaminò, S. Lucia del Mela, Merì, Soccorso then “burst” into the trial.
