Rome — Italian authorities arrested Italy's most-wanted fugitive on Monday, taking mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro into custody after a 30-year manhunt. Messina Denaro's arrest brings to an in depth the period of the "Cosa Nostra" Sicilian crime syndicate depicted in "The Godfather" motion pictures.
The 60-year-old fugitive was caught in a "well being facility in Palermo, the place he had gone for therapeutic remedy," mentioned particular operations commander Pasquale Angelosanto.
Italian media reported that Messina Denaro was being handled for colon most cancers on the non-public hospital "La Maddalena" for the final 12 months beneath the false identify "Andrea Buonafede." Reviews mentioned he didn't resist arrest and that he was taken to an undisclosed location by police.
Based on eyewitnesses, when passers-by realized that safety forces had apprehended the infamous crime determine, folks cheered and applauded the police.
Paramilitary police handout video exhibits Messina Denaro, wearing a lightweight brown sheepskin jacket, hat and sun shades, being escorted by two paramilitary police right into a van. Earlier than that, the one recognized picture of the fugitive dated again to the early Nineties.
Messina Denaro had been sentenced in absentia to life in jail for the 1992 murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, whose murders shocked the nation and led to stricter anti-mafia laws. He was additionally convicted of dozens of different murders, together with that of the younger son of a turncoat; the 12-year-old boy was held prisoner for 2 years earlier than he was strangled and his physique dissolved in acid.
Messina Denaro was thought-about "Mafia the Aristocracy" — the final of three prime mafia bosses, the others being the infamous Salvatore "Toto'" Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, each of whom additionally eluded seize for many years, persevering with to reside clandestine lives in Sicily.
Riina, the so-called "boss of bosses," was on the run for 23 years earlier than his arrest in 1993. Provenzano spent 38 years as a fugitive and was lastly captured in 2006.
Specialists say the mobsters had been capable of depend on a community of mafia contacts and a code of confidentiality that allowed them to maneuver from hideout to hideout. Messina Denaro and Riina had been caught in Palermo, the Sicilian capital, whereas Provenzano was apprehended in a farmhouse in close by Corleone.
Criminology skilled Anna Sergi on the College of Essex in England mentioned Messina Denaro was "the final one, essentially the most resilient one, the 'purest' Sicilian mafioso remaining."
"He's the essence of the nice historic energy of Cosa Nostra," she advised the French information company AFP. "The myths round his interval on the run are a part of the explanation why the mafia fable endures."
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hailed the arrest as "an incredible victory for the state that exhibits it by no means offers up within the face of the mafia."