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Italy: Messina Denaro, Cosa Nostra leader, arrested

The Sicilian mafia boss had been a fugitive from justice for 30 years. The arrest took place in a clinic in Sicily, where the drug lord was being treated for cancer.

Matteo Messina Denaro

(Cordon Press)

Published by
Alejandro Baños

This Monday, Italian police forces arrested Sicilian mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, who had been wanted for 30 years. The arrest took place at a clinic in Palermo, where he is undergoing treatment for colon cancer.

Giorgia Meloni, Italy's prime minister, congratulated security and intelligence forces for arresting the leader of the Cosa Nostra, as the Sicilian mafia is commonly known, and assured that the fight against crime is a "priority":

A great victory for the State, which shows that it does not surrender to the mafia. On the anniversary of Totò Riina's arrest, another organized crime boss, Matteo Messina Denaro, appears in court. My most sincere thanks, together with that of the entire Government, to the Police, and in particular to the Carabinieri Ros, to the National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor's Office and to the Prosecutor's Office of Palermo for the capture of the maximum exponent of Mafia criminality. The prevention and fight against Mafia crime, as attested by the fact that the first measure of the Executive referred to the harsh penitentiary regime for Mafiosi, will continue to be a top priority of this Government.

Who is Messina Denaro?

Matteo Messina Denaro, 60, was at the top of the list of Italy's most wanted fugitives. His whereabouts were completely unknown and there are no known photographs of him since the 1990s. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1993, a year in which he managed to evade justice and flee. Italian intelligence services believe that he continued to give orders to the criminal organization despite not knowing where he was hiding.

The Cosa Nostra increased its murder rate under Denaro. Among the most notorious crimes he planned and perpetrated were the murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. He also organized the 1993 bombings in Milan, Florence and Rome, as well as the murder of the 11-year-old son of a mobster-turned-witness, who was strangled and his body thrown into a vat of acid.

Indications of his whereabouts narrowed in 2015. Police authorities discovered that he communicated with his henchmen through the "pizzini" system, a method of communication that consists of leaving small paper notes under rocks. Denaro and his collaborators worked out of a Sicilian farm.

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