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ROME (AP) — Italy’s No. 1 fugitive, Matteo Messina Denaro, a convicted Mafia boss who ordered a few of the nation’s most heinous killings, was arrested Monday at a personal clinic in Sicily after three a long time on the run, Italian paramilitary police mentioned.
Messina Denaro was captured on the Palermo clinic the place he was receiving therapy for an undisclosed medical situation, in accordance with 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 in pouring rain. Messina Denaro was carrying a brown leather-based jacket trimmed in shearling, an identical white-and-brown cranium cap and his trademark tinted glasses. His face regarded wan and he stared straight forward.
A younger man when he went into hiding, he's now 60. Messina Denaro, who had an influence base close to within the western Sicilian port metropolis of Trapani, was thought of 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 lots of of law enforcement officials through the years had been tasked with monitoring him down.
Italian information stories mentioned that when Carabinieri got here as much as him within the clinic and requested if he have been Messina Denaro, the fugitive admitted that he was.
Palermo Chief Prosecutor Maurizio De Lucia instructed Rai state TV that the fugitive had been utilizing the pseudonym Andrea Bonafede. The final title roughly means “good religion” in Italian.
Shortly after his arrest, Messina Denaro appeared earlier than a courtroom in Palermo, the place a decide sought to verify his id and ask primary inquiries to fill out paperwork.
Reminded by the decide that he should reply honestly, Messina Denaro replied: “Conscious.” When requested his occupation, he replied “farmer” and added that his brother was a banker and his 4 sisters homemakers.
For his residence, he cited Castelvetrano, a farm city close to Trapani which was his crime clan’s energy base and the place he was assured of logistics help throughout his time as a fugitive, in accordance with investigators.
He additionally instructed the courtroom he was one among six youngsters, together with a brother in banking.
The temporary listening to ended with Messina Denaro telling the decide, who wasn’t recognized by state TV, “Thanks, good day.”
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 killed prime anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, Falcone’s spouse and a number of other of their bodyguards. 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.
Monday’s arrest got here 30 years and a day after the Jan. 15, 1993, seize of convicted Mafia “boss of bosses” Salvatore “Toto” Riina, in a Palermo residence after 23 years on the run. Messina Denaro went into hiding in the summertime 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 reveals that it doesn’t give up within the face of the Mafia.”
Italy’s Mafia boss who set the file 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 centered on Messina Denaro, however regardless of quite a few reported sightings he managed to elude arrest, till Monday.
That every one three prime bosses have been in the end arrested within the coronary heart of Sicily whereas they performed a long time of a clandestine life received’t shock Italy’s police and prosecutors. Regulation enforcement have lengthy mentioned that such bosses depend on contacts and the confidentiality of fellow mobsters and complicit members of the family to maneuver them from hideout to hideout, provide meals, clear clothes and communication, and a code of silence referred to as “omerta.”
However Messina Denaro, apart from staying in hideouts in Sicily, additionally traveled overseas whereas a fugitive, together with to Marseille, the French port metropolis, the place he underwent surgical procedure some years in the past, in accordance with investigators.
Riina and Provenzano lived out the final years of their life within the strictest of Italian jail circumstances reserved for unrepentant organized crime bosses and refused to cooperate with investigators.
Messina Denaro was believed to have loved a extra snug life-style in his a long time hiding from police, leaving some to take a position whether or not he may conform to cooperate with prosecutors in alternate for extra lenient jail circumstances.
Throughout his years on the run, he had a sequence of lovers and handed time by taking part in video video games, in accordance with Italian media stories.
One in every 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 might be merciless, strangling a girl whereas she was pregnant, in accordance with Italian media.
Proper after he went into hiding, Messina Denaro despatched a letter to his then girlfriend, saying, “You’ll hear discuss me, they'll paint me just like the satan, nevertheless it’s all falsehoods,’’ ANSA quoted the letter as saying.
Cautious of being tracked down by cellphone use, Mafia bosses continuously 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 Nineties towards Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, the island’s mafiosi began shedding 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, based mostly within the “toe” of the Italian peninsula, steadily eclipsed Cosa Nostra in attain and affect. In contrast to Sicily’s crime syndicates, the ‘ndrangheta attracts its footsoldiers based mostly on household ties, leaving it much less susceptible 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 in the event that they don’t recurrently pay “safety cash.”
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This story has been corrected to indicate that Messina Denaro is one among six youngsters, not the daddy of six youngsters.