WHAT place, if any, has humanity in a fight with barbarism? On June 5th such a question was posed in an unusual fashion in Italy when the country’s highest appeals court hinted that Salvatore “Totò” Riina should be freed to “die with dignity”. As the head of the Sicilian Mafia, Cosa Nostra, Mr Riina is credited with ordering or committing several hundred murders, including those in 1992 of two of Italy’s modern heroes, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, two anti-Mafia prosecutors.

The judges said a lower court’s rejection of an application for house arrest by Mr Riina (pictured) had not offered proof that he still posed a threat. The lower-court judges must now rewrite their verdict. If it is again judged unsatisfactory, the 86-year-old “godfather” could end his days in his home town of Corleone, in Sicily.

Also known as la belva (The Beast), Mr Riina is an exceptionally ferocious mobster. Under his command a 14-year-old boy was strangled before his body was dissolved in acid. After snatching the leadership of the Corleone “family”, Mr Riina took on the established clans in the Sicilian capital of Palermo, sparking a Mafia war that cost several hundred lives. Once he was recognised as the undisputed chief of Cosa Nostra, he led it into a terrorist onslaught on the state, which culminated in the assassination of the two prosecutors.

Paolo Borsellino’s brother, Salvatore, said the judges should “not even begin to think of a dignified death for an animal like Totò Riina”. Relatives of the prisoner’s victims sneered that Mr Riina had scarcely given their loved ones a dignified end. Though he has tumours on both kidneys, Mr Riina remains subject to the strict regime designed to ensure that Mafia bosses cannot escape or communicate with their subordinates outside. He attends court hearings that concern him via a video link, lying on a trolley bed.

Politicians are divided on the issue: the leader of the populist Northern League, Matteo Salvini, deplored the court’s ruling; his party colleague, Roberto Maroni, a former interior minister, supported it. Several commentators protested that Mr Riina could receive adequate medical treatment in jail. Others questioned that; he is said to need an adjustable bed that cannot fit through the door of his cell.

Whether Mr Riina remains a threat depends in part on whether he is still Cosa Nostra’s capo di tutti i capi (boss of all bosses). It was once widely thought that, after his arrest in 1993, overall command passed to his associate, Bernardo Provenzano, and that since Provenzano’s arrest in 2006 (he died last year) the supreme commander has been a godfather from Trapani, Matteo Messina Denaro. But Italy’s chief anti-Mafia prosecutor, Franco Roberti, hinted at new evidence that Cosa Nostra’s mobsters have never ceased to regard him as their chief, despite his long spell behind bars.

Mr Roberti also noted that, despite the restrictions on him, Mr Riina had managed to issue at least one death threat from jail, against a prosecutor who has been probing claims that representatives of the government negotiated with Cosa Nostra. Another experienced anti-Mafia investigator, Nicola Gratteri, said: “A boss like Riina can even give orders just with his eyes.”