After 30 years on the run: Italy captures the most wanted mafioso

International

For the worst mafia crimes in Italy should he have been responsible. He is the boss of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and he was Italy’s most wanted criminal: After three decades on the run, mafioso Matteo Messina Denaro has been arrested.

Special forces arrested him in a private clinic in Palermo, as the Carabinieri announced on Monday morning. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni spoke of a “great success for the state, which shows that the mafia has never been defeated”. Her Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi called the arrest “historic”.

30 years on the run: He was considered the last top mafioso who was still on the run

Messina Denaro, now 60, has been on the run since 1993. He is said to have committed or organized dozens of murders. Among them were the deadly 1992 bombings of mafia hunters Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. This had shocked Italy and organized a new offensive against the crime guided.

Commemoration of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino: Fiat of the escort that accompanied Giovanni Falcone on the day of his death.Image: stock&people / imago images

Messina Denaro was considered a confidant and then successor to former Cosa Nostra bosses Salvatore “Totò” Riina and Bernardo Provenzano. Riina was called the boss of bosses in Sicily, he was extremely brutal and ruthless. He was arrested on January 15, 2013, almost 30 years to the day before Messina Denaro. Riina and Provenzano died in prison in 2017 and 2016 respectively. Messina Denaro was considered the last fugitive top Mafioso from that time.

For decades there was an intensive search for the mafioso

In the past decades, various anti-mafia agents of the Carabinieri and the police after the man. In countless raids on Sicily, however, he was repeatedly missed. By order of the public prosecutors Maurizio de Lucia and Paolo Guido, access was then made to the private clinic “La Maddalena” in Palermo.

Messina Denaro stayed there “to get treatment,” as Pasquale Angelosanto, head of the Carabinieri’s special command, said. He is said to have had a tumor, the newspaper “Corriere della Sera” reported. The arrested man was first taken to a military barracks and was scheduled to be flown out of Palermo to be taken to a maximum security prison.

First recordings of the arrest – people in Palermo cheered

In the morning circulated in Internet Cell phone videos intended to show the criminal’s arrest or the moments afterwards. On them you can see how People applauded in Palermo. In a first photo distributed by the Carabinieri from a automobile Messina Denaro can be seen next to two police officers. He is wearing a light colored cap and sunglasses. It is the first official picture of the man since the early 1990s.

So far, the law enforcement officers have only had phantom drawings or images available for the search, with which computers have calculated what the aged man might look like today.

The identikit (2011) released by the police shows Matteo Messina Denaro. The image has aged.Image: ANSA/epa/Police

politicians of all parties reacted with relief and praise to the arrest of Messina Denaro. President Sergio Mattarella – whose brother Piersanti, as regional president of Sicily, had been killed by the Mafia in 1980 – telephoned the interior minister and the Carabinieri commander, to congratulate them.

Opposition leader Enrico Letta of the Social Democrats tweeted: “In the end, the mafia always loses. That is the central message of this historic January 16.” Former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi spoke of a “celebration for the whole country”.

(ast/with material from dpa/AFP)