Italy‘s most wanted mafia boss, Matteo Messina Denaro, has been arrested in his native Sicily after 30 years on the run.
Italian police swooped in on a private hospital in the Sicilian capital of Palermo where Denaro had gone for treatment for an undisclosed medical treatment and arrested him.
Denaro has been sentenced in absentia to a life term for his role in the 1992 murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
He also faces a life sentence for his role in bomb attacks in Florence, Rome and Milan which killed 10 people the following year.
Italy’s most wanted mafia boss, Matteo Messina Denaro, has been arrested in his native Sicily after 30 years on the run. Pictured: A composite picture showing a computer generated image released by the Italian Police, right, and a picture of Mafia top boss Matteo Messina Denaro
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hailed the arrest as ‘a great victory for the state that shows it never gives up in the face of the mafia’.
Read Related Also: Family of Tenerife hit-and-run victim, 50, to fight decision to close investigation into her death
Even while a fugitive, Messina Denaro, who had a power base in western Sicily, was considered Sicily’s Cosa Nostra top boss.
Police said in September 2022 that Messina Denaro was still able to issue commands relating to the way the mafia was run in the area around the western Sicilian city of Trapani, his regional stronghold, despite his long disappearance.
Messina Denaro, who comes from the small town of Castelvetrano near Trapani, is accused by prosecutors of being solely or jointly responsible for numerous other murders in the 1990s.
In 1993 he helped organise the kidnapping of a 12-year-old boy, Giuseppe Di Matteo, in an attempt to dissuade his father from giving evidence against the mafia, prosecutors say.
The boy was held in captivity for two years before he was strangled and his body dissolved in acid.
This is a breaking news story, more to follow…
