Matteo Messina Denaro's lengthy document as a killer — turncoat mobsters mentioned he'd boast of sufficient murders to fill a cemetery — drastically burnished his credentials amongst his friends as a significant boss within the Sicilian Mafia.
After 30 years eluding seize whereas nonetheless working a lot of the Mafia's affairs, he was arrested on Monday at a Palermo clinic, the place the convicted mobster was receiving chemotherapy.
However whereas he was hustled off to a maximum-security jail on the Italian mainland, his seize is hardly anticipate to carry the demise of the Cosa Nostra, due to the syndicate's greater than century-old roots and guidelines.
"What is going to occur intimately, we will not know," Palermo Prosecutor Normal Lia Sava, mentioned on Rai state radio about the way forward for the Mafia.
"However one factor is certain. Cosa Nostra is made up of guidelines. It has supported itself on these guidelines for 150 years, so definitely it can put into movement these guidelines to restore the injury, and thus create the brand new management construction wanted after the arrest,″ Sava mentioned.
Whereas Messina Denaro wielded nice affect within the Mafia, for many years Cosa Nostra has lacked a supreme capo, investigators say.
The virtually legendary determine of a "boss of bosses″ led to 1993, with the arrest in a Palermo hideout of Salvatore "Toto" Riina, who had been Italy's prime fugitive for 23 years.
In keeping with trial testimony that led to his conviction for a lot of murders, together with the 1992 bombings that killed Italy's prime two anti-Mafia magistrates, Riina was in command of Cosa Nostra's "fee" that ran illicit companies and devised a method of lethal retaliation in opposition to the state for its crackdown on the mob.
"After Riina there was by no means an absolute boss,″ mentioned Rome Chief Prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi, who took up his publish final yr after serving as Palermo chief prosecutor, serving to coordinate the hunt for Messina Denaro.
Even when the "capo di capi" determine nonetheless existed, Messina Denaro would not have certified as a result of he got here from Castelvetrano on Sicily's western edge, not from Palermo or its surrounding countryside, Lo Voi famous, citing Cosa Nostra's guidelines.
Nonetheless, Messina Denaro, the son of a criminal offense boss, "was one of the necessary bosses and (he) had ties with different prison organisations in Italy and overseas,″ Lo Voi advised The Related Press.
"That is why his arrest certainly represents an earthquake at this second for Cosa Nostra,″ Lo Voi mentioned.
Additionally boosting Messina Denaro's status was his fierce document as a murderous clan boss, holding sway over a big swath of western Sicily, Lo Voi mentioned.
A army airplane ferried Messina Denaro on Tuesday to a most safety jail in L'Aquila, within the central Apennine mountains, the place strict guidelines for prime organised crime bosses who will not cooperate with authorities embody sharply restricted customer privileges.
Italy's nationwide anti-Mafia prosecutor, Giovanni Melillo, mentioned that lastly placing Messina Denaro behind bars will not change the technique Cosa Nostra has adopted for greater than a decade.
That technique is "now not one in every of violence" in opposition to the state, Melillo mentioned on state TV, referring to the 1992 bombings that killed Palermo prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, and the 1993 bomb assaults in opposition to Rome church buildings, the Uffizi Galleries in Florence and an artwork gallery in Milan, a part of the Mafia's bid to attempt to get the state to drop its crackdown on Cosa Nostra.
As a substitute Cosa Nostra is mendacity low, opting to "co-penetrate the social and financial cloth" of Italy, Melillo mentioned.
A small military of turncoats helped Italian authorities put scores of Cosa Nostra members behind bars in the previous few many years, and as a consequence, gave enhance to the 'ndrangheta crime syndicate in Italy's southern "toe," permitting it to eclipse the Sicilian mob in affect to turn into one of many world's greatest cocaine brokers.
Within the Eighties, an FBI undercover operation working with Italian investigators, together with Falcone, broke up a multi-million heroin ring and cocaine distribution operation involving Sicilian Mafia figures and the Gambino crime household in New York.
However Cosa Nostra currently "has gone again in an enormous option to drug trafficking," together with cocaine, artificial unlawful medicine and heroin, Lo Voi mentioned. With sufficient drug commerce to go round, there is not any actual rivalry between Cosa Nostra and the 'ndrangheta, he added.
With drug trafficking, "the earnings are monumental and the exercise is much less harmful than extortion," Lo Voi mentioned.
Pressuring native companies to pay crime clans month-to-month safety cash, often called "pizzo," has lengthy been a mainstay of Cosa Nostra's exercise.
However some 15 years in the past, grass-roots teams of younger folks in Palermo rebelled in opposition to their elders' longtime give up to the observe. Forming an organisation known as "Addiopizzo," or "Farewell Pizzo," they inspired companies to report extortionists to authorities as a substitute of paying them.
Management of native territory is essential for the Mafia's existence.
Lo Voi mentioned through the COVID-19 pandemic, neighbourhood mobsters provided residents with groceries when breadwinners misplaced jobs.
That advanced relationship — a mix of profit, concern and even complicity — is suspected of serving to Messina Denaro elude the legislation for 30 years, most of that point in Sicily.
Since his seize, police have been looking his most up-to-date hideout — a house on a dead-end alley in Campobello di Mazara, close to Trapani. The proprietor is Andrea Bonafede, the title the fugitive used on an id card to obtain his most cancers remedy.
The actual Bonafede is underneath investigation, together with at the least one of many medical doctors who had been concerned within the fugitive's remedy on the clinic starting in late 2020, Italian information stories mentioned.
Fellow most cancers sufferers advised La Repubblica each day that the person who wore designer scarves and painted by hand shirts freely chatted with them whereas receiving chemotherapy and typically gave them bottles of olive oil.
Six years in the past, Italian authorities confiscated 13 million euros ($20 million) value of olive groves and bottling services linked to Messina Denaro within the countryside close to Trapani.
Shouts of "Bravi!" rose on the street exterior the clinic when two Carabinieri officers introduced him out of the clinic.
However others puzzled about why it took many years to seize him.
"I had anticipated for a very long time that it might occur, however it's absurd that it took 30 years,″ Salvatore Borsellino, brother of the slain prosecutor, advised AP in a video interview from Palermo.
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It is clear "that he loved cowl" on the native degree, Borsellino mentioned. "However there should have been institutional complicity" as nicely.