Italian authorities arrested the nation’s No. 1 fugitive, convicted Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro at a personal clinic in Palermo, Sicily on Monday.
The Messina Denaro’s arrest comes after virtually 30 years on the run, Italian paramilitary police mentioned.
Messina Denaro was captured on the clinic the place he was receiving therapy for an undisclosed medical situation, mentioned Carabinieri Gen. Pasquale Angelosanto, who heads the police power’s particular operations squad.
Messina Denaro 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 high boss even whereas a fugitive.
He was the final of three longtime fugitive top-level Mafia bosses who had for many years eluded seize.
Messina Denaro, who was tried in absentia and convicted of dozens of murders, faces a number of life sentences.
He is ready to be imprisoned for 2 bombings in Sicily in 1992 that murdered high anti-Mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
Among different grisly crimes he was convicted of is the homicide of a Mafia turncoat’s younger son, who was strangled and his physique dissolved in a vat of acid.
He additionally faces a life sentence for his function in bomb assaults in Florence, Rome and Milan which killed 10 folks the next 12 months.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hailed the arrest as “a great victory for the state that shows it never gives up in the face of the mafia.”
The arrest Monday got here 30 years and a day after the seize of convicted “boss of bosses” Salvatore “Toto” Riina, in a Palermo condominium after 23 years on the run.
