Three decades on the run
Blow against the mafia: Cosa Nostra boss Messina Denaro arrested in Sicily
STORY: Italian police have arrested the country’s most wanted mafia boss. Emergency services stormed a private hospital in the Sicilian capital of Palermo, where Matteo Messina Denaro was being treated. He had been on the run for three decades. According to prosecutors, Denaro is a boss of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra. She holds the godfather responsible or partly responsible for numerous murders in the 90s, including the assassination of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. Denaro was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for the two attacks. He also faces life imprisonment for his role in the bombings in Florence, Rome and Milan, which killed ten people. Police said in September that Denaro, despite going into hiding, still had influence over the mafia in the region around the western Sicilian city of Trapani.
One of Italy’s biggest mafia bosses has been caught. Special forces in a private clinic in Palermo managed to access it.
He is the boss of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and he was the most wanted criminal in Italy: Matteo Messina Denaro. After three decades on the run, special forces arrested the mafioso in a private clinic in Palermo, as the carabinieri announced on Monday morning. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni spoke of a “great success for the state, which shows that the mafia has never been defeated”. Her Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi called the arrest “historic”.
Messina Denaro, now 60, has been on the run since 1993. He is said to have committed or organized dozens of murders. These included the deadly 1992 bombings of mafia hunters Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. These had shocked Italy and led to a new offensive against organized crime.
Mafia boss Denaro is said to have been hospitalized for a tumor
Messina Denaro was considered a confidant and then successor to former Cosa Nostra bosses Salvatore “Totò” Riina and Bernardo Provenzano. Riina was called the boss of bosses in Sicily, he was extremely brutal and ruthless. He was arrested on January 15, 2013, almost 30 years to the day before Messina Denaro. Riina and Provenzano died in prison in 2017 and 2016 respectively. Messina Denaro was considered the last fugitive top Mafioso from that time.
In the past few decades, various anti-mafia agents from the carabinieri and the police have been looking for the mafioso. In countless raids on Sicily, however, he was repeatedly missed. In 2015, the investigators discovered, among other things, that Denaro, who was born near Trapani in western Sicily, did without modern means of communication in order not to leave any traces. Instead, he used the age-old mafia method of “pizzini” – encoded messages on a small piece of paper – to instruct his henchmen.
By order of the public prosecutors Maurizio de Lucia and Paolo Guido, access was now made to the private clinic “La Maddalena” in Palermo. Messina Denaro stayed there “to get treatment,” as Pasquale Angelosanto, head of the Carabinieri’s special command, said. He is said to have had a tumor, the newspaper “Corriere della Sera” reported. The arrested man was first taken to a military barracks and was scheduled to be flown out of Palermo to be taken to a maximum security prison.
“In the end, the mafia always loses”
In the morning, mobile phone videos were circulating on the Internet, which are said to show the arrest of the criminal or the moments afterwards. They show people applauding in Palermo. In a first photo from a car distributed by the Carabinieri, Messina Denaro can be seen next to two police officers. He is wearing a light colored cap and sunglasses. It is the man’s first official picture since the early 1990s. So far, the law enforcement officers have only had phantom drawings or images available for the search, with which computers have calculated what the aged man might look like today.
Until his arrest, there was only one known picture of mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro (left) from the early 1990s. With the help of computer technology, the Italian police had simulated the possible future appearance of the Cosa Nostra boss.
© Polizia di Stato / Picture Alliance
Politicians from all parties reacted with relief and praise to Messina Denaro’s arrest. President Sergio Mattarella – whose brother Piersanti, as regional president of Sicily, was killed by the mafia in 1980 – phoned the interior minister and the Carabinieri commander to congratulate them.
Opposition leader Enrico Letta of the Social Democrats tweeted: “In the end, the mafia always loses. That is the central message of this historic January 16.” Former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi spoke of a “celebration for the whole country”.