- Carabinieri via AP.
VIVA – The most wanted Mafia boss from Italy, Matteo Messina Denaro has been arrested in Sicily after 30 years on the run. He was reportedly detained in a private clinic in Sicily’s capital, Palermo, where he was receiving treatment for cancer.
According to judicial sources said the mobster was a regular visitor thereafter cancer surgery last year, "Illness is one of the events in the lives of individuals (fugitives) that forces them to open up," Palermo Prosecutor Paolo Guido told a press conference.
After being informed that he was ill, police interrogated Messina Denaro, weeding out other potential suspects of similar age and condition by checking the national health system database.
Mafia Italia, Matteo Messina Denaro, ditangkap di luar sebuah klinik swasta di P
- AP Photo.
"The investigative work is unrelenting, constant, and gradual," said General Pasquale Angelosanto of the ROS special forces Carabinieri police.
He added that over the years Carabinieri police had arrested more than 100 alleged accomplices of Messina Denaro, including his sister and other family members, and seized assets worth around 150 million euros ($162 million), crucially undermining his support network.
In the end, the man known as 'U Siccu' (the skinny one) or 'Diabolik' (an Italian comics character) offered no resistance and did not try to escape, Palermo Chief Prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia said.
"We caught a very dangerous fugitive without having to use violence, we didn't even have to use handcuffs," he said.
Chief Prosecutor Lucia said Messina Denaro spent his life hiding in different parts of Italy, but most recently lived in his home province of Trapani, in western Sicily, and the island's regional capital, Palermo. Other questions include political connections, and what establishment allowed the mobster to escape justice for so long.
A video circulated by Italian media appears to show people standing in the street and applauding the Italian police as Messina Denaro is led away.
These are some of the murders he was convicted over:
1. the 1992 killing of anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino,
2. the deadly 1993 bomb attacks in Milan, Florence, and Rome
3. the kidnapping, torture, and killing of the 11-year-old son of a mafioso-turned-state witness
4. Messina Denaro once boasted he could "fill a cemetery" with his victims.
The Mafia boss also oversaw racketeering, illegal waste dumping, money laundering and drug-trafficking for the powerful Cosa Nostra organized crime syndicate.
