The pizza maker was actually an alleged member of the Italian mafia, on the run for 16 years

According to testimonies, he called himself Paolo Dimitrio and was employed in several Italian restaurants as a pizza maker in Saint-Etienne, where he had settled for a few years. Italian Edgardo Greco was arrested Thursday after 16 years on the run, Interpol announced.

This alleged member of the powerful Calabrian mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2006 in Italy for homicides. He expressed his refusal to be handed over to Italian justice and was placed in detention, according to the general prosecutor’s office.

The 63-year-old man was arrested by the French police thanks to information from the Italian carabinieri, shared between the two partner countries thanks to the I-Can project (Interpol cooperation against the ‘Ndrangheta).

Edgardo Greco described as “dangerous” by Interpol

According to the Italian carabinieri, Edgardo Greco was the subject of a European arrest warrant in 2014 from the public prosecutor’s office in Catanzaro (Calabria, in southern Italy) after his life sentence for two murders committed in January 1991, and an attempted murder in July 1991. The fugitive, described as “dangerous” by Interpol, had escaped while in police custody. He was part of the Perna-Pranno clan at the time, which was the most important in the city of Cosenza, where he lived.

“He is considered to be jointly responsible for the ambush of January 5, 1991 which cost the lives of the brothers Stefano and Giuseppe B., who wanted greater autonomy and consideration among the clans of Cosenza”, explain the Italian carabinieri in a communicated. The victims had been killed “with iron bars in a fish warehouse (…) and their bodies disappeared and were never found”, according to the same source.

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