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In the months before he was gunned down in cold blood, Mafioso Salvatore Montagna was being hunted by a team of people who knew almost every move he made while he was being betrayed by a cloned smartphone.

The detail is one of many contained in the evidence gathered in the wake of Montagna’s murder, on Nov. 24, 2011, that had been subject to a publication ban for years until a Superior Court judge partially lifted the order during a hearing at the Laval courthouse on Friday.

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Montagna was the upstart within the Mafia in Montreal, arriving in 2009 after being deported from the United States. He apparently chose to reside here to take advantage of the fact that Vito Rizzuto, the longtime leader of the Mafia in Montreal, was serving a 10-year sentence in the U.S., and the organization that bore his family’s name was weakened in his absence.

What Montagna likely did not factor into his plans was that just months after he arrived in Montreal, Raynald Desjardins, 62, was freed of court-imposed conditions, after serving jail time, that had prevented him from re-taking his high stature among Montreal’s mobsters. Desjardins was sentenced to 15 years in 1994 for plotting to smuggle cocaine into Canada.