Fugitive politician's wife pleads for 'missing' teenage son

Chiara Rizzo says has no idea who is looking after 15-year-old

(ANSA) - Reggio Calabria, June 6 - Chiara Rizzo, the jailed wife of fugitive politician Amedeo Matacena, issued a dramatic appeal for news of her 15-year-old son Friday. "Since I have been detained I have no news of my son, I need help," she told Italian Senator Lucio Barani, who visited her in the Reggio Calabria prison.

Rizzo was extradited from Montecarlo and jailed to stop her helping her husband stay on the run in Dubai. Matacena, a former deputy of the Forza Italia party, was sentenced to five and half years in prison for external aiding and abetting of a Mafia crime gang and is at large in the Middle East. "I don't know if he is with his sister, I don't know who is taking care of him," Rizzo said of her son. Former interior minister Claudio Scajola, 66, is under investigation for helping Matacena evade arrest but the former close associate of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi denies wrongdoing.

Scajola was arrested on May 10 on suspicion that he helped Matacena flee Italian justice after a definitive conviction for links to Calabria's 'Ndrangheta mafia. Matacena said he would return to Italy only if his case is put before Europe's Court of Human Rights as well as Italy's high Cassation Court.