Graziano Mesina, the former 'Scarlet
Pimpernel' of Sardinian kidnapping banditry, died in a Milan
hospital at the weekend a day after being released from prison
with terminal cancer.
Mesina, 83, died in San Paolo Hospital in the Lombardy capital
after spending two years in Opera Prison as part of a 30 year
sentence for drug trafficking.
Arrested 12 years ago as the alleged head of a drugs gang,
Mesina was first sentenced to 30 years in an appeals trial in
Cagliari in 2018 - a verdict the Cassation Court upheld in 2020.
After his arrest, his State pardon, granted by President Carlo
Azeglio Ciampi in 2004, was revoked in 2016.
Mesina, who was affectionately nicknamed Grazianeddu, was
pardoned after almost 50 years in and out of jails but returned
to drug trafficking and attempted kidnapping.
Sardinia's most famous postwar bandit was a hero to many
champagne Socialists and anti-government militants in the 1960
and 1970s for his supposedly anti-capitalist kidnappings, daring
prison breaks and glamorous lifestyle on the run.
The former iconic bandit was acquitted in October 2013 of
ordering the murder of Santino Gungui near Nuoro on Christmas
night in 1974.
Prosecutors had asked for a life penalty, arguing that Mesina,
then in jail, ordered the hit on 37-year-old Gungui for not
handing over the proceeds of arms and drugs trafficking.
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