- Cosa Nostra boss captured after 30 years
- Detained in a private hospital in Palermo
- Convicted of his involvement in the murder of anti-mafia prosecutors
PALERMO, Italy, Jan 16 (Reuters) – Italian police on Monday arrested Matteo Messina Denaro, the country’s most wanted mafia boss who had been on the run since 1993, by storming a private hospital in the Sicilian capital Palermo where he was being treated.
Prosecutors say Messina Denaro, 60, is the boss of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra mafia.
He was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for his role in the 1992 murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
Police said they detained him at La Maddalena hospital in Palermo on Monday morning, in the northern suburbs of the city. Images on social media showed local residents cheering and shaking hands with police in balaclavas as the minivan believed to have contained the suspect was driven away.
Messina Denaro had been having appointments at the hospital for some time, Italy’s Ansa news agency reported, adding that police secretly moved staff into the building at night to protect other patients.
Italian news agencies reported that he was believed to be suffering from cancer.
Messina Denaro also faces a life sentence for his role in bombings in Florence, Rome and Milan that killed 10 people the following year.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hailed the arrest as “a great victory for the state, which shows that it never surrenders in the face of the mafia”.
“EXTRAORDINARY EVENT”
The arrest comes almost 30 years to the day since police arrested Salvatore “Toto” Riina, the most powerful Sicilian mob boss of the 20th century. He eventually died in prison in 2017, never having broken his code of silence.
“This is an extraordinary event of historical importance,” said Gian Carlo Caselli, who was a prosecutor in Palermo at the time of Riina’s arrest. The fact that the arrest coincided with Reena’s anniversary made it even more significant, he added.
However, he said Cosa Nostra had in the past shown its ability to survive the arrest of senior figures and regroup.
Police said in September 2022 that Messina Denaro was still able to issue commands related to how the mafia was run in the area around the western Sicilian city of Trapani, his regional stronghold, despite his long disappearance.
Messina Denaro, who hails from the small town of Castelvetrano near Trapani, is accused by prosecutors of being solely or jointly responsible for numerous other murders in the 1990s.
In 1993, he helped arrange the kidnapping of a 12-year-old boy, Giuseppe Di Matteo, in an attempt to dissuade his father from testifying against the Mafia, prosecutors said. The boy was held captive for two years before being strangled and his body dissolved in acid.
additional reporting by Angelo Amante, writing by Keith Weir and Christina Carlevaro, editing by Federico Macchioni, Gavin Jones and Nick McPhee
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