Italy’s most wanted Mafia Boss Matteo Messina Denaro Has been arrested in Sicily.
Matteo Messina Denaro is arrested while being treated in private health clinic in Palermo, prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia said Monday.
He had been a fugitive since 1993 and was considered by Europol one of the most wanted men in Europe.
“It is a victory for all the police forces that have worked together over these long years to bring the dangerous fugitive to justice,” Italy’s chief of Police, Lamberto Giannini, said in a statement congratulating the Carabinieri – Italy’s military police – and the Palermo Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Defense Minister Guido Crosetto called the arrest “a sign of a state that wins against Mafia.”
Italian media reported that Messina Denaro was captured just before 10:00 (09:00 GMT) and taken to a secret location by the Carabinieri.
He was reportedly visiting the clinic under a fake name for a course of chemotherapy.
These are some of the murders he was convicted over:
the 1992 killing of anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino,
the deadly 1993 bomb attacks in Milan, Florence and Rome
the kidnapping, torturing and killing a 11-year-old son of a mafioso-turned-state witness
Messina Denaro is thought to have ordered dozens of Mafia-related murders, and was given several life sentences in absentia for his many crimes, most notably in 1992 for his involvement in the separate murders of anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
