PALERMO, Italy (Reuters)Jan,16 – Italian police on Wednesday arrested Matteo Messina Denaro, the country’s most wanted mafia boss, who has been on the run since 1993 when he stumbled upon a private hospital in the Sicilian capital. bottom. She was hospitalized and treated.
Prosecutors say 60-year-old Messina Her Denaro is the boss of the Sicilian Mafia, Cosa Her Nostra.
He had been sentenced to life in absentia for his involvement in the 1992 murders of anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
Police said they arrested him Monday morning at La Maddalena hospital in the northern suburbs of Palermo. Photos on social media showed locals clapping and shaking hands with police in balaclavas as the minivan, believed to be carrying the suspect, was driven away. Messina Denaro had had an appointment at the hospital for some time, Italian news agency Ansa reported, adding that police had secretly brought officers into the building at night to protect other patients.
He is said to be suffering from cancer, according to an Italian news agency.
Messina Denaro also faces life in prison for his involvement in the bombings that killed 10 of his people in Florence, Rome and Milan the following year.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hailed the arrest as “a great victory for a nation that shows never giving up in the face of the Mafia”.
The arrest comes nearly 30 years after police arrested his Salvatore “Toto” Riina, the most powerful Sicilian mafia boss of the 20th century. He eventually died in prison in 2017 without breaking his code of silence.
Gian Carlo Caselli, who was Palermo’s prosecutor at the time of Liina’s arrest, said: “This is a very important historical event. made even more important, he added.
But Cosa Nostra has a history of showing its ability to survive arrests and regroupings of high-ranking figures, he said.
Police said in his Sept 2022, Messina de Naro, despite having long disappeared, was still under orders for how the mafia was operating around the region’s home town of Trapani, a city in western Sicily. said it was able to bring down Messina Denaro, from Castelvetrano, a small town near Trapani, has been accused by prosecutors of being solely or jointly responsible for a number of other murders in the 1990s.
In 1993, he organized the kidnapping of his 12-year-old boy Giuseppedi his Matteo in an attempt to dissuade his father from testifying against the Mafia. The boy was held captive for two years before he was strangled and his body dissolved in acid.
