Italy catches fugitive Mafia boss Messina Denaro

Tullio Filippone and Ella Ide, Agence France-Presse

Italian anti-mafia police caught Sicilian godfather Matteo Messina Denaro on Monday, ending a 30-year manhunt for Italy&#x27;s most wanted fugitive. A ruthless operator who once reportedly boasted he could &quot;fill a cemetery&quot; with his victims, the 60-year-old Messina Denaro was a leading figure in Cosa Nostra, the real-life Sicilian crime syndicate depicted in the Godfather movies.The mobster was nabbed &quot;inside a health facility in Palermo, where he had gone for therapeutic treatment&quot;, special operations commander Pasquale Angelosanto said in a police statement.He had been undergoing periodic treatment for colon cancer under a false name, and did not resist arrest, ANSA news agency said.Criminology expert Anna Sergi at the University of Essex said Messina Denaro was &quot;the last one, the most resilient one, the &#x27;purest&#x27; Sicilian mafioso remaining&quot;.&quot;The secrets he is said to keep fuel conspiracies around mafia-state agreements in the 1990s,&quot; she told AFP.&quot;He is the essence of the great historical power of Cosa Nostra. The myths around his period on the run are part of the reason why the Mafia myth endures.&quot;<div>- &#x27;Extremely dangerous&#x27; -</div>Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Messina Denaro was the &quot;most significant&quot; mafia boss and his arrest in his native Sicily was a &quot;great victory&quot; for the state in its war against organised crime.Police images showed him being escorted by officers to a waiting vehicle, wearing a cream hat, sunglasses and a brown leather jacket with a cream sheepskin lining.Before that, the only known photo of him dated back to the early 1990s. He had been on the run since 1993.His first words to police were &quot;I&#x27;m Matteo Messina Denaro&quot;, ANSA reported.Locals could be seen cheering and applauding in the rain as he was driven away.Messina Denaro was arrested a day after the 30th anniversary of the arrest of Salvatore &quot;The Beast&quot; Riina, the Cosa Nostra boss who died in 2017.He had been number one on Italy&#x27;s most-wanted list, accused of mafia association, multiple murders and use of explosives.<div>- Dissolved in acid -</div>Messina Denaro was convicted in absentia of being behind the 1993 bombings in Rome, Milan and Florence that killed 10 people, just months after Cosa Nostra murdered anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in similar attacks.He was also convicted for the murder of a teenager who was strangled and dissolved in acid after his father turned state witness.The arrest of &quot;an extremely dangerous fugitive&quot; was &quot;an extraordinary day for the state&quot;, Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said.In 2015, police discovered Messina Denaro was communicating with his closest collaborators via the pizzini system, where tiny, folded paper notes were left under a rock at a farm in Sicily.Investigators spent decades searching the homes and businesses of the boss&#x27;s known allies on the island.They looked in particular for hiding places in grottoes, caverns or even bunkers inside buildings where the man nicknamed &quot;Diabolik&quot; could be concealed.Federico Varese, a criminology professor at Oxford University, said the fact that Sicilian mob families are weaker these days than their counterparts in Calabria or Campania may have helped in Messina Denaro&#x27;s capture.He said it was &quot;amazing that he was still in Palermo&quot;.&quot;But it makes sense. If you want to continue to exercise a degree of power, you must be in the territory,&quot; he said.

Messina Denaro was convicted for the murder of a teenager who was strangled and dissolved in acid after his father turned state witness.

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Italy catches fugitive Mafia boss Messina Denaro

Italy catches fugitive Mafia boss Messina Denaro

Tullio Filippone and Ella Ide,

Agence France-Presse

Published Jan 16, 2023 08:21 PM PHT

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