ROME (AP) — Italy’s No. 1 fugitive, convicted Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, was captured on Monday at a personal clinic in Palermo, Sicily, after three a long time on the run, Italian paramilitary police stated.
Messina Denaro was captured on the clinic the place he was receiving therapy for an undisclosed medical situation, stated Carabinieri Gen. Pasquale Angelosanto, who heads the police pressure’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 on a grey morning. Messina Denaro was carrying a brown leather-based jacket trimmed in shearling and an identical white-and-brown cranium cap and his trademark tinted glasses. His face regarded wan and he regarded straight forward. He 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, and tons of of cops over time had been tasked with monitoring him down.
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 murdered high anti-Mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, Falcone’s spouse and a number of other of their bodyguards. Amongst 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.
The arrest Monday got here 30 years and a day after the Jan. 15, 1993, seize of convicted “boss of bosses” Salvatore “Toto” Riina, in a Palermo condominium after 23 years on the run. Messina Denaro went into hiding in summer time 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 fingers, the hunt targeted on Messina Denaro, however regardless of quite a few reported sightings of the boss, he managed to elude arrest, till Monday.
That every one three high 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. Legislation enforcement have lengthy stated that such bosses depend on contacts and confidentiality of fellow mobsters and complicit members of the family to maneuver the fugitives from hideout to hideout, provide fundamental wants, like meals and clear clothes and communication, and a code of silence often known as “omerta’.”
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 comfy life-style in his a long time hiding from police, leaving some to take a position whether or not he would possibly comply with 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 enjoying video video games, in keeping with Italian media experiences.
Certainly one 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 point for ladies, Messina Denaro may very well be merciless, strangling a lady whereas she was pregnant, in keeping with Italian media.
Proper after he went into hiding, Messina Denaro despatched a letter to his then girlfriend, saying, “You’ll hear speak about me, they are going to 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 often known 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 in opposition to 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, primarily based 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 primarily based 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 usually pay “safety cash.”
Post a Comment