ROME, Metropolitan Metropolis of Rome — Italy’s No. 1 fugitive, convicted Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, was captured on Monday at a non-public clinic in Palermo, Sicily, after three a long time on the run, Italian paramilitary police stated.
Messina Denaro was captured on the clinic the place he was receiving remedy for an undisclosed medical situation, stated Carabinieri Gen. Pasquale Angelosanto, who heads the police power’s particular operations squad.
A pair of Carabinieri officers, every holding an arm, walked him down the entrance steps of the upscale clinic and led him to a ready black van on a grey morning. Messina Denaro was sporting a brown leather-based jacket trimmed in shearling and an identical white-and-brown cranium cap and his trademark tinted glasses. His face regarded wan and he regarded straight forward. He was taken to a secret location by police instantly after the arrest, Italian state tv reported.
A younger man when he went into hiding, he's now 60. Messina Denaro, who had an influence base within the port metropolis of Trapani, in western Sicily, was thought-about Sicily’s Cosa Nostra prime boss even whereas a fugitive.
He was the final of three longtime fugitive top-level Mafia bosses who had for many years eluded seize, and a whole lot of cops over time had been tasked with monitoring him down.
Messina Denaro, who was tried in absentia and convicted of dozens of murders, faces a number of life sentences.
He's set to be imprisoned for 2 bombings in Sicily in 1992 that murdered prime anti-Mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, Falcone's spouse and a number of other of their bodyguards. Amongst different grisly crimes he was convicted of is the homicide of a Mafia turncoat's younger son, who was kidnapped and strangled earlier than his physique was dissolved in a vat of acid.
The arrest Monday got here 30 years and a day after the Jan. 15, 1993, seize of convicted “boss of bosses” Salvatore “Toto” Riina, in a Palermo house after 23 years on the run. Messina Denaro went into hiding in summer time of that very same 12 months, because the Italian state stiffened its crackdown on the Sicilian crime syndicate following the murders of Falcone and Borsellino.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni tweeted that Messina Denaro's seize is a “nice victory of the state, which exhibits that it would not give up within the face of the Mafia.”
Italy's Mafia boss who set the report for the longest time on the lam was Bernardo Provenzano, captured in a farmhouse close to Corleone, Sicily, in 2006 after 38 years as a fugitive. As soon as Provenzano was in police palms, the hunt targeted on Messina Denaro, however regardless of quite a few reported sightings of the boss, he managed to elude arrest, till Monday.
That each one three prime bosses had been finally arrested within the coronary heart of Sicily whereas they carried out a long time of a clandestine life will not shock Italy's police and prosecutors. Legislation enforcement have lengthy stated that such bosses depend on contacts and confidentiality of fellow mobsters and complicit relations to maneuver the fugitives from hideout to hideout, provide primary wants, like meals and clear clothes and communication, and a code of silence referred to as “omerta'.”
Riina and Provenzano lived out the final years of their life within the strictest of Italian jail situations reserved for unrepentant organized crime bosses and refused to cooperate with investigators.
Messina Denaro was believed to have loved a extra comfy life-style in his a long time hiding from police, leaving some to take a position whether or not he may comply with cooperate with prosecutors in alternate for extra lenient jail situations.
Throughout his years on the run, he had a collection of lovers and handed time by enjoying video video games, based on Italian media stories.
Considered one of his girlfriends was arrested and convicted of getting hidden him for a time whereas he was a fugitive. However whereas he had a weak spot for girls, Messina Denaro may very well be merciless, strangling a girl whereas she was pregnant, based on Italian media.
Proper after he went into hiding, Messina Denaro despatched a letter to his then girlfriend, saying, "You will hear speak about me, they'll paint me just like the satan, but it surely's all falsehoods,'' ANSA quoted the letter as saying.
Cautious of being tracked down by cellphone use, Mafia bosses regularly resort to handwritten notes referred to as “pizzini.” When Provenzano was nabbed in his rustic, virtually primitive, hideaway within the countryside, police discovered a stash of such notes.
With the crackdown that started within the Nineteen Nineties towards Sicily's Cosa Nostra, the island's mafiosi began dropping their dominance in Italy in comparison with different organized crime syndicates.
Whereas the Sicilian Mafia was considerably weakened by a small military of turncoats, on the mainland, the ‘ndrangheta syndicate, primarily based within the “toe” of the Italian peninsula, steadily eclipsed Cosa Nostra in attain and affect. Not like Sicily's crime syndicates, the ‘ndrangheta attracts its footsoldiers primarily based on household ties, leaving it much less weak to turncoats. The ’ndrangheta is now one of many world's strongest cocaine traffickers.
However the Sicilian Mafia nonetheless runs drug trafficking operations. Different profitable illicit companies embrace infiltration of public works contracts and extortion of small enterprise homeowners who're threatened if they do not frequently pay “safety cash.”