Italian mafia boss arrested: The investigators struck in the private clinic

He was involved in a number of serious violent crimes and has been on the run for 30 years: Italy’s most wanted man, the Sicilian mafia boss Messina Denaro, has now been caught – in a private clinic in Palermo.

A friendly demeanor, fine Italian, elegant clothes, he usually wore a silk scarf around his neck. According to Italian media, the mafia boss, who was convicted of multiple murders, presented himself as a dandy in the “La Maddalena” clinic in Palermo, according to some of the staff of the private hospital.

Nobody suspected the man who presented an identity card in the name of Andrea Bonafede, but his real name is Matteo Messina Denaro – and until 9:35 this morning he was the most wanted Italian mafioso.

Hospitalized for cancer for a year

Then the men of the anti-mafia special unit ROS struck and Carabinieri General Pasquale Angelosanto was able to proudly announce: “They arrested the fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro inside a health facility where he had gone to undergo medical treatment.”

According to the investigators’ findings, the Mafioso’s treatment in the Palermitan clinic has been dragging on for a year. Messina Denaro was diagnosed with liver cancer and underwent surgery and chemotherapy. It is not implausible that no one in the hospital has recognized him in recent months. The last publicly known photo of the mafia boss dates from the early 1990s.

Proximity to relatives made going into hiding easier

It is noteworthy that Messina Denaro, who is wanted worldwide, has now been tracked down in Palermo. There and in Trapani, only a hundred kilometers away, he had been running his criminal business for years.

Mafia expert and author Enzo Ciconte is not surprised that the investigators were able to arrest the super boss on his doorstep, so to speak: “This is his home. Here are the relatives, the friends. There is a social context that makes it easier to go into hiding. ” As a “normal fugitive criminal” he would probably have gone into hiding abroad. But a mafioso who has gone into hiding, explains Ciconte, “wants to continue to command. In order to communicate, he needs people who are close to him.”

network of his supporters became his undoing

For 30 years, half of his life, Messina Denaro managed to escape the anti-mafia hunters in this way. The two other important Italian mafia bosses of the past decades, Bernardo Provenzano and Totò Riina, were arrested after a long flight in Sicily. The network of his supporters ended up being Messina Denaro’s undoing.

The arrest was not based on a decisive tip, but because the investigators, following the example of the arrest of Provenzano, persistently followed the traces of Messina Denaro’s relatives and friends for years. Traces that eventually led to a private clinic in northern Palermo. Several who had helped the Mafia boss escape had already been arrested in recent years. Now there was no escape for Messina Denaro herself.

Meloni congratulated the investigators

Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella congratulated the investigators on their success. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni traveled to Palermo to pay tribute to the anti-mafia hunters. She said it was “a holiday for all decent people, for the families of victims of organized crime, for the many men and women who are quietly fighting 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year dedicate their lives to the mafia”.

More than a dozen serious violent crimes

According to the findings of the Italian judiciary, Messina Denaro was involved in more than a dozen serious violent crimes. Among other things, in the murder of prosecutors Falcone and Borsellino in 1992. He is also said to have been involved in the case of Giuseppe Di Matteo, who was twelve when he was kidnapped, in the early 1990s. The body of the boy, son of a mafia dropout, was dissolved in acid by his tormentors. The case had caused international horror because of its unprecedented brutality.

Messina Denaro has been sentenced to life imprisonment several times in absentia for his crimes. After today’s arrest, against which he is said not to have defended himself, the mafia boss was first taken to a carabinieri barracks. After that, Messina Denaro should be transferred to a maximum security prison.