loading…
Three Decades on the Run, Italian Mafia Boss Arrested by Police in Sicily. PHOTO/Reuters
ROMA – Bos mafia most wanted in Italia , Matteo Messina Denaro (60) was arrested in Sicily on Monday (16/1/2023) morning. He was arrested after about three decades on the run, Italian police say.
Denaro is being held in a private clinic in the Sicilian city of Palermo, Italian media reported. Denaro was arrested just before 0900GMT and taken to a secret location by Carabinieri police.
Baca: Italian Mafia boss asks his daughter to be killed for being a police girlfriend
Denaro, considered one of Sicily’s most powerful Cosa Nostra mafia bosses, has been sentenced to life in prison in absentia for several murders, including his role in the 1992 murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
He also faces life in prison for his role in the bomb attacks in Florence, Rome and Milan, which killed 10 people in 1993.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called the arrests a “huge victory for a country that has shown never to give up before the mafia.”
Denaro, the Last “Godfather” of Cosa Nostra, has been a fugitive since 1993, but anti-mafia prosecutors believe he is still issuing orders from various secret locations.
Baca: Sicilian Mafia Boss ‘Man Killer’ Giovanni Brusca Freed, Public Outraged
John Dickie, a professor of Italian studies at University College London and mafia expert, described Messina Denaro’s arrest as “another signal of the decline of the Sicilian mafia”.
“He was the youngest member of the leadership group within the Sicilian mafia that took control of the Sicilian mafia in the early 1980s, basically by massacring all their rivals, and then launched a major attack on the Italian nation,” Dickie told Al Jazeera.
“All of this is aimed at trying to get the country back from the massive offensive against organized crime that has been gaining momentum. But the attacks have continued and Messina Denaro is the last of that leadership group who is still at large.”
(esn)
