(*30*)PALERMO, Italy, Jan 16 (Reuters) – Italy’s most needed mafia boss, Matteo Messina Denaro, was arrested by armed police at a personal hospital in Sicily on Monday, the place the person who has been on the run since 1993 was being handled for most cancers.
Nicknamed “Diabolik” and “‘U Siccu” (The Skinny One), Messina Denaro had been sentenced in absentia to a life time period for his position within the 1992 murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, crimes that shocked the nation and sparked a crackdown on Cosa Nostra.
Messina Denaro, 60, was led away from Palermo’s “La Maddalena” hospital by two uniformed carabinieri police and bundled right into a ready black minivan. He was carrying a brown fur-lined jacket, glasses and a brown and white woolly hat.
Judicial sources stated he was being handled for most cancers and had an operation final 12 months, adopted by a collection of appointments below a false title.
“We had a clue to the investigation and followed it through to today’s arrest,” Palermo prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia stated.
Magistrate Paolo Guido, who was additionally accountable for investigations into Messina Denaro, stated dismantling his community of protectors was key in reaching the end result following years of labor.
A second man who had pushed Messina Denaro to the hospital was arrested at the scene on suspicion of aiding a fugitive.
Images on social media confirmed locals applauding and shaking palms with police in balaclavas because the minivan carrying Messina Denaro was pushed away from the suburban hospital to a secret location.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni travelled to Sicily to congratulate police chiefs after the arrest.
“We have not won the war, we have not defeated the mafia but this battle was a key battle to win, and it is a heavy blow to organised crime,” she stated.
Maria Falcone, sister of the murdered choose, echoed that sentiment.
“It proves that mafiosi, despite their delusions of omnipotence, are ultimately doomed to defeat in the conflict with the democratic state,” she stated.
FAST CARS, FLASHY CLOTHES
Messina Denaro comes from the city of Castelvetrano close to Trapani in western Sicily, and is the son of a mafia boss.
Police stated final September that he was nonetheless capable of subject instructions regarding the best way the mafia was run within the space round Trapani, his regional stronghold.
Before he went into hiding, he was recognized for driving costly vehicles and his style for carrying finely tailor-made fits and Rolex watches.
He faces a life sentence for his position in bomb assaults in Florence, Rome and Milan that killed 10 folks in 1993 and is accused by prosecutors of being solely or collectively answerable for quite a few different murders within the Nineteen Nineties.
In 1993 he helped organise the kidnapping of a 12-year-old boy, Giuseppe Di Matteo, in an try and dissuade his father from giving proof in opposition to the mafia, prosecutors say. The boy was held in captivity for 2 years earlier than he was strangled and his physique dissolved in acid.
The arrest comes virtually 30 years to the day since police arrested Salvatore “Toto” Riina, the Sicilian Mafia’s strongest boss of the twentieth century. He ultimately died in jail in 2017, having by no means damaged his code of silence.
“It is an extraordinary event, of historic significance,” stated Gian Carlo Caselli, who was a prosecutor in Palermo at the time of Riina’s arrest.
Despite the euphoria, Italy nonetheless faces a battle to rein in organised crime teams whose tentacles stretch far and extensive.
Experts say that Cosa Nostra has been usurped by the ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia, as essentially the most highly effective organised crime group in Italy.
“There is a sense that the Sicilian Mafia is not as strong as it used to be, especially since the 90s, they have really been unable to enter the drug market and so they are really second-fiddle to the ‘Ndrangheta on that,” stated Federico Varese, Professor of Criminology at Oxford University.
further reporting by Angelo Amante and Alvise Armellini, writing by Keith Weir and Cristina Carlevaro, modifying by Gavin Jones, Nick Macfie and Alex Richardson
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