Italy's most wanted Mafia boss arrested in Sicily after 30 years on the run as police swoop on private clinic
16 January 2023, 09:03 | Updated: 16 January 2023, 10:47
Italy's most wanted mafia boss, Matteo Messina Denaro, has been arrested by police after spending three decades on the run.
Denaro is alleged to be a boss of the notorious Sicilian Cosa Nostra crime family and has been on the run since 1993.
Denaro was arrested in the Sicilian capital Palemo. He was held by police while attending a hospital appointment at the Maddalena clinic in Palermo where he was to 'undergo therapy,' according to reports in Italy.
The fugitive crime boss was loaded into a black van after his arrest at 9.35am today by armed police, to the applause of onlookers.
He had been sentenced to life in absentia for his role in the 1992 murders of two anti-mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
He faces further life sentences for roles in bomb attacks in Florence, Rome and Milan that claimed 10 lives.
Denaro, nicknamed ‘‘Diabolik’’, was once considered a candidate to be the Sicilian mafia’s boss of bosses, after the deaths of Bernardo Provenzano, in 2016, and Salvatore Riina, in 2017.
Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said it was "a great victory for the state that demonstrates that it does not give up in the face of the mafia."
"Another head of organized crime is brought to justice."
Messina Denaro was considered Sicily's top Cosa Nostra boss even while he was a fugitive.
Police said last September that he was still giving orders around the area of the Sicilian city of Trapani despite being in hiding.
Denaro is accused of being behind multiple other murders in the 1990s.
In 1993 he is alleged to have helped organise the kidnapping of a 12 year old boy, in an attempt to dissuade his father from giving evidence against the Mafia.
The boy was held in captivity for two years before he was strangled and his body dissolved in acid.
Denaro is now aged 60 and was one of three top level mafia bosses who had evaded capture for many years.
