Italy’s No. 1 fugitive, convicted Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, has been arrested at a personal clinic in Palermo, Sicily, after 30 years on the run, Italian paramilitary police stated.
Messina Denaro was captured on Monday on the clinic the place he was receiving remedy for an undisclosed medical situation, stated Carabinieri Gen. Pasquale Angelosanto, who heads the police pressure’s particular operations squad.
Messina Denaro 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 prime boss even whereas a fugitive.
He was the final of three longtime fugitive top-level Mafia bosses who had for many years eluded seize.
Messina Denaro, who tried in absentia and convicted of dozens of murders, faces a number of life sentences.
He is ready to be imprisoned for are two bombings in Sicily in 1992 that murdered prime anti-Mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. Among different grisly crimes he was convicted of is the homicide of a Mafia turncoat’s younger son, who was strangled and his physique dissolved in a vat of acid.
The arrest Monday got here 30 years and a day after the seize of convicted “boss of bosses” Salvatore “Toto” Riina, in a Palermo condominium after 23 years on the run.