By FRANCES D’EMILIO (Associated Press)
ROME (AP) — Italy’s No. 1 fugitive, a Mafia boss convicted of serving to to mastermind among the nation’s most heinous slayings, was arrested Monday when he sought therapy at a non-public clinic in Sicily after three many years on the run.
Matteo Messina Denaro was tried in absentia and convicted of dozens of murders, together with serving to to mastermind, together with different Cosa Nostra bosses, a pair of 1992 bombings that killed high anti-Mafia prosecutors — and led the Italian state to stiffen its crackdown on the Sicilian crime syndicate. He faces a number of life sentences that he’s anticipated to serve in a most safety jail and below the notably restrictive situations reserved for high organized crime bosses.
He went into hiding a 12 months after these bombings whereas nonetheless a younger man — however he was nonetheless thought of one in all Cosa Nostra’s high bosses at the same time as a fugitive. Hundreds of cops had been tasked through the years with monitoring him, the final of three longtime top-level Mafia bosses who managed to elude seize for many years.
He is now 60, and his well being situation helped investigators zero in on him, in response to Carabinieri Gen. Pasquale Angelosanto, who heads the police pressure’s particular operations squad.
“It all led to today’s date (when) he would have come for some tests and treatment” on the clinic, the Carabinieri basic mentioned.
Authorities didn’t say what he was being handled for, however he was captured at La Maddalena clinic in Palermo, an upscale medical facility with a popularity for treating most cancers sufferers, and Italian media mentioned he was present process therapy for a 12 months.
During a night information convention, authorities mentioned Messina Denaro’s therapy might proceed at a hospital jail ward.
Investigators mentioned he was unarmed and dressed like a typical affected person on the clinic, although sporting a watch value a minimum of 30,000 euros (about $33,000).
“He didn’t resist at all,” Carabinieri Col. Lucio Arcidiacono advised reporters.
A pair of Carabinieri officers, every holding an arm, walked Messina Denaro down the entrance steps of the clinic to a ready black van in pouring rain. He was wearing a brown leather-based jacket trimmed in shearling, an identical white-and-brown cranium cap and his trademark tinted glasses. His face seemed wan and he stared straight forward.
Shortly after his arrest, the solar peeked by means of, and a rainbow might be seen within the sky over the clinic.
When dozens of cops, sporting ski masks, converged on the clinic, native residents knew one thing massive was about to occur. When Messina Denaro was introduced outdoors, applause rang out on the sidewalks.
Palermo Chief Prosecutor Maurizio De Lucia advised reporters that the fugitive had used the pseudonym Andrea Bonafede and had an Italian identification card in that identify. He used the alias — the surname roughly means “good faith” in Italian — to e book a morning appointment on the clinic.
In addition to convictions for the killings of prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, he was additionally discovered responsible of killing Falcone’s spouse and several other of their bodyguards in addition to the grisly homicide of a Mafia turncoat’s younger son, who was kidnapped and strangled earlier than his physique was dissolved in a vat of acid.
He additionally was amongst Cosa Nostra bosses convicted of ordering a collection of bombings in 1993 that induced fatalities and broken the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, two main church buildings in Rome and an artwork gallery in Milan.
“We captured the last of the massacre masterminds” of the 1992-1993 Mafia killings, prosecutor De Lucia mentioned. “It was a debt that the Republic owed to the victims of those years.”
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni tweeted that Messina Denaro’s seize is a “great victory of the state, which shows that it doesn’t surrender in the face of the Mafia.”
Monday’s arrest got here 30 years and a day after the Jan. 15, 1993, seize of Mafia “boss of bosses” Salvatore “Toto” Riina, in a Palermo condominium, after 23 years on the run. Messina Denaro went into hiding throughout the summer time of that 12 months.
The Italian Mafia boss who set the document for the longest time on the lam was Bernardo Provenzano. He was captured in a farmhouse close to Corleone, Sicily, in 2006 after 38 years as a fugitive. Once Provenzano was in police arms, the hunt targeted on Messina Denaro, who managed to elude arrest regardless of quite a few reported sightings, together with in northern Italy.
That all three high bosses had been finally arrested within the coronary heart of Sicily whereas they carried out clandestine lives for many years gained’t shock Italy’s police and prosecutors. Law enforcement officers have lengthy mentioned that such bosses depend on contacts and the confidentiality of fellow mobsters and complicit relations to maneuver them from hideout to hideout, provide meals, clear clothes and communication, and a code of silence often called “omertà.”
But Messina Denaro, in addition to staying in hideouts in Sicily, additionally traveled overseas whereas a fugitive, together with to Marseille, the French port metropolis, the place he underwent surgical procedure some years in the past, in response to investigators.
Riina and Provenzano lived out the final years of their lives within the strictest of Italian jail situations reserved for unrepentant organized crime bosses and refused to cooperate with investigators.
Some have speculated whether or not Messina Denaro may conform to cooperate with prosecutors in change for extra lenient jail situations.
During his years on the run, he had a collection of lovers and handed time by enjoying video video games, in response to Italian media experiences. Messina Denaro is believed to have fathered two youngsters whereas a fugitive. One of his girlfriends was arrested and convicted of getting hidden him for a time.
Right after he went into hiding, Messina Denaro despatched a letter to his then-girlfriend that Italian information company ANSA mentioned learn: “You’ll hear talk about me, they will paint me like the devil, but it’s all falsehoods.”
Wary of being positioned by means of cellphone use, Mafia bosses continuously resort to handwritten notes often called “pizzini.” When Provenzano was nabbed in his rustic hideaway, police discovered a stash of such notes.
On Monday, Italian state TV transmitted what it mentioned was an audio recording of a 1993 look by Messina Denaro earlier than a Sicilian court docket. A choose sought to substantiate his identification and requested fundamental inquiries to fill out paperwork.
When requested his occupation, he replied “farmer” and added that his brother was a banker and his 4 sisters homemakers. For his residence, he cited Castelvetrano, a farm city close to Trapani, which was his crime clan’s energy base and the place he was assured of logistics help throughout his time as a fugitive, in response to investigators.
The brother was convicted years in the past of Mafia affiliation. One of the sisters was convicted of serving to run the crime clan throughout Messina Denaro’s years on the run, Italian information experiences mentioned.
With the crackdown that started within the Nineties in opposition to Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, the island’s mafiosi began dropping their dominance in Italy in comparison with different organized crime syndicates.
As the Sicilian Mafia was considerably weakened by a small military of turncoats, on the mainland, the ‘ndrangheta syndicate, primarily based within the “toe” of the Italian peninsula, steadily eclipsed Cosa Nostra in attain and affect.
Unlike Sicily’s crime syndicates, the ‘ndrangheta draws its foot soldiers based on family ties, leaving it less vulnerable to those who cooperate with investigators. The ’ndrangheta is now one of many world’s strongest cocaine traffickers.
But the Sicilian Mafia nonetheless runs drug trafficking operations. Other profitable illicit companies embrace infiltration of public works contracts and extortion of small enterprise homeowners who’re threatened in the event that they don’t repeatedly pay “protection money.”
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This story has been up to date to right that Messina Denaro is one in all six youngsters, not the daddy of six youngsters, and to right the date of his court docket statements to a 1993 look earlier than a choose.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”