Rome/Milan
CNN
—
Prosecutor Maurizio de Lucía said on Monday that Matteo Messina Denaro, one of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra Mafia bosses and Italy’s most wanted man, was being treated at a private clinic in Palermo. He said he was arrested by the police while he was there.
He had been on the run since 1993 and was considered one of Europe’s most wanted men by Europol, Delucia told CNN.
“It’s a victory for all the police who have worked together for many years to bring dangerous fugitives to justice,” Italian Police Chief Lamberto Giannini said in a statement, congratulating the Carabinieri and Palermo. public prosecutor’s office.
Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni tweeted that it was “a big win for the country that shows they will not give up in the face of the Mafia.”
Defense Minister Guido Crosett called the arrest “a sign that the state has won the mafia”.
Meloni, speaking outside the public prosecutor’s office, said Italy had not yet won the “war” against the Mafia, but that this was “an essential battle to win”.
“It’s a day to celebrate and tell children that the Mafia can be defeated,” she said.
Messina Denaro is believed to have ordered dozens of Mafia-related murders, and for his many crimes, notably his involvement in the separate murders of anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. , was sentenced to several life sentences in absentia in 1992.
He was sentenced to life in prison in 2020 for the deadly bombings of Milan, Florence and Rome in the late 1990s and for the murder and torture of his opponent’s 11-year-old son, who gave evidence against Cosa Nostra in Sicily. was handed down.
Wanted for nearly 30 years, he was Cosa Notra’s longest-held fugitive.
Messina Denaro was taken into custody after an early morning raid by more than 100 professional agents alongside anti-Mafia carabinieri at around 10 a.m. local time. The Maddalena Clinic where he was arrested is a private clinic known for plastic surgery and other elective surgeries. Messina It is not known what kind of treatment his Denaro received.
A spokesperson for the Carabinieri told CNN on Monday that he was being held in a “secret location.”
In recent years, anti-mafia security forces have been closing in on Messina Denaro’s circles, with nearly €3 billion ($3.25 billion) belonging to associates, relatives and associates believed to be secretly supporting his livelihood. seized assets and made arrests during 2009. And in 2010.
Messina Denaro, known as Diabolic, is believed to be one of the successors to Bernardo Provenzano, who was arrested in April 2006 while hiding in a farmhouse outside Corleone, Sicily.
Crime was a family affair for Messina Denaro, who was born on April 26, 1962 in Sicily to a famous mafia boss.
In 2013, her sister Patrizia Messina Denaro was sentenced to 14 years in prison for being a member of the Mafia, and she is still serving her sentence.
While in hiding, Messina Denaro maintained several romantic relationships, including having a daughter, Lorenza, with her fiancée, Franca Alagna. Another of his high-profile contacts was with an Austrian hotel employee. He boasted that the two had traveled to Greece on vacation, even though they were on Europol’s most wanted list.
Over the years, numerous attempts to arrest him have failed.
In May 2011, police believed they were watching a farmhouse near Messina Denaro’s hometown of Castelvetrano, but were unable to catch him despite the involvement of hundreds of police officers. bottom. His DNA was later found at the scene.
In 2021, the arrest of a British man at a restaurant in The Hague after anti-mafia police mistakenly identified him as Messina Denaro added to police embarrassment.
A suspected sighting of him in a car in September of that year led to an investigation and hundreds of reports, prosecutors said.
