Jan. 16 (UPI) — Mafia chieftain Matteo Messina Denaro, dubbed the “boss of bosses” of the organized crime empire, was arrested in Italy Monday after three decades on the run, police announced.
The 60-year-old Denaro was taken into custody without incident at a healthcare clinic in Palermo, Sicily, where he had gone to undergo clinical therapy, according to Pasquale Angelosanto, head of the Carabinieri police’s Special Operations Group.
The operation to reel in Italy’s most wanted man came after an investigation coordinated by the Palermo prosecutor’s office, he said.
Sources told the Corriere della Serra newspaper that Denaro had been undergoing treatment at the La Maddelina private clinic for a tumor for at least a year.
Other patients at the clinic applauded as the mafia boss was led away in handcuffs and transferred to the San Lorenzo Carabinieri barracks in Palermo, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.
Italian Prime Minister Premier Giorgia Meloni praised the arrest as a “great victory for the State,” pointing out that it came just a day after the 30th anniversary of the perhaps the most famous arrest of a mafia leader in Italy — the nabbing of Salvatore “Toto” Riina in 1993.
“My warmest thanks and those of the entire government go to the police forces, in particular to the Carabinieri [special operations] section, the National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor’s Office, and the Palermo Prosecutor’s Office, for the capture of the most significant figure in the mafia,” she said in a Twitter thread.
“The government will make sure that the fight against mafia crime continues without respite, as demonstrated by the fact that this executive’s first measure — the defense of the ‘carcere ostativo’ (a law imposing long sentences for mafia criminals) — concerned precisely this matter,” she added.
Denaro went into hiding in 1993 after being sentenced to life imprisonment as a prime instigator of the July 19, 1992, Via D’Amelio terrorist attack, which killed anti-mafia Italian magistrate Paolo Borsellino and five members of his police escort.
He was also convicted in connection with a bombing on May 23, 1992, in Capaci, Sicily, in which anti-Mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone, his wife Francesca Morvillo and three police escort agents were killed.
Nicknamed “Diabolik” from an Italian comic book character, police believe Denaro rose to the position of “boss of bosses” in the crime family after the deaths of Bernardo “The Tractor” Provenzano in 2016 and Riina in 2017.
