How Italy's most-wanted Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro arrested in Sicily

Italy's most-desired Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro has been arrested in Sicily after 30 years on the run.

Messina Denaro became reportedly detained in a non-public health facility in Sicily's capital, Palermo, where he became receiving treatment for cancer.

He is said to be a boss of the notorious Cosa Nostra Mafia and he become tried and sentenced to lifestyles in jail in absentia in 2002 over numerous murders.

More than 100 members of the defense force were concerned in his arrest.

Italian media mentioned that Messina Denaro turned into captured simply earlier than 10:00 (09:00 GMT) and taken to a secret vicinity through the Carabinieri. He was reportedly journeying the health facility beneath a fake name for a route of chemotherapy.

A video circulated through Italian media seems to show humans standing in the street and applauding the Italian police as Messina Denaro is led away.

These are some of the murders he turned into 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 abduction, torture and killing of the 11-12 months-old son of a mafioso-became-country witness

Messina Denaro once boasted he ought to "fill a cemetery" along with his victims.

The Mafia boss also oversaw racketeering, illegal waste dumping, cash-laundering and drug-trafficking for the powerful Cosa Nostra organised crime syndicate.

He was reportedly the protege of Totò Riina, head of the Corleone clan, who changed into arrested in 1993 after 23 years on the run.
Matteo Messina DenaroImage source, Reuters
Image caption,
Matteo Messina Denaro was reportedly detained in a clinical clinic

Clans nicknamed Messina Denaro "Diabolik" - the name of an uncatchable thief in a comedian book series - and "U Siccu" (Skinny).

He is thought to be Cosa Nostra's remaining "mystery-keeper". Many informers and prosecutors trust that he holds all of the records and the names of these worried in several of the most high-profile crimes via the Mafia, along with the bomb assaults that killed magistrates Falcone and Borsellino.

Although Messina Denaro had been a fugitive due to the fact that 1993, he turned into concept to have still been issuing orders to his subordinates from diverse mystery places.

Over the a long time, Italian investigators regularly came close to catching Messina Denaro by using monitoring the ones closest to him.

This resulted within the arrest of his sister Patrizia and several different of his associates in 2013. Police additionally seized precious agencies linked to Messina Denaro, leaving him more and more isolated.

However, few pictures of Messina Denaro existed and police had to rely on digital composites to reconstruct his look inside the a long time after he went at the run. A recording of his voice turned into no longer released till 2021.

In September 2021, a Formula 1 fan from Liverpool turned into arrested at gunpoint in a eating place in the Netherlands after being fallacious for Messina Denaro.

Italians were glued to their monitors on Monday morning while information of the arrest of the mafia boss broke.

For years, Messina Denaro had been a image of the state's inability to attain the higher echelons of the organised crime syndicates.

His arrest will be an surprising sign of desire that the Mafia can be eradicated even within the southern areas of the united states of america, wherein the nation is perceived as in large part absent and ineffective.

University of Esses criminology professor Anna Sergi instructed the BBC that Messina Denaro's arrest changed into "symbolic no longer just due to the fact he became the boss of Cosa Nostra, but due to the fact he represents the closing fugitive the Italian nation definitely desired to get its fingers on."

She stated the reason humans applauded in Palermo and the country felt "effective" was because the information felt like closure.

However, questions are probably to arise over the timing of the arrest.

Prof Sergi cautioned it was nevertheless unclear how the morning raid at the clinic happened, who tipped the authorities off and crucially, the way it changed into feasible for Messina Denaro to "run around Sicily, probably covered, for 30 years".

Messina Denaro changed into being handled for most cancers so turned into "pretty unwell", the professor stated, including people have been speculating that someone within the crime global had determined he turned into now not beneficial.

"This method he became likely nevertheless a part of shape in which there may be an change of favours among the Mafia and nation, and where one can be given up in return for something," she explained.

But at a press conference on Monday afternoon the Carabinieri regarded to disclaim that they had received a tip-off at the whereabouts of Messina Denaro and emphasised the tough paintings of investigators who tracked the mafia boss down in a "painstaking and extremely sensitive" operation.

The government said Messina Denaro did not attempt to run when he realised the operation became taking area, and that he admitted to being the person the Carabinieri were looking for as soon as they approached him.

They additionally said that the fugitive turned into "searching properly, nicely dressed and wearing excessive-cease apparel": "We virtually did now not discover a destroyed guy… we determined a well-groomed guy in a great financial condition."

General Pasquale Angelosanto of the ROS special force unit of the Carabinieri brought that Messina Denaro changed into wearing an eye worth 35,000 euros ($37,880, £31,067) whilst officers detained him.

"Obviously the mafia has now not been defeated, and it would be a mistake to assume it so," stated the Palermo prosecutor wellknown Maurizio De Lucia.

De Lucia also told newshounds that Messina Denaro spent the ultimate 3 a long time hiding out in many components of Italy, maximum recently in Sicily.

After the arrest, tributes to the work of the defense force poured in from throughout the political spectrum.

Gian Carlo Caselli, a decide and former prosecutor preferred, stated that the arrest of Messina Denaro changed into an "superb... Simply historic event" that would lead to substantial trends within the ongoing inquiries into the 1993 bomb attacks that killed 10 people throughout Italy.

Italy's president, Sergio Mattarella, whose brother Piersanti turned into killed via Cosa Nostra in 1980, congratulated the minister of the indoors and the carabinieri army police.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni travelled to Sicily these days and visited the memorial to Giuseppe Falcone and the opposite victims of the 1992 bombing near Palermo, in which she observed a minute's silence.

Ms Meloni also thanked the defense force for his or her work in detaining the "maximum crucial member of the mafia criminal organization", adding: "This is a exquisite victory for the nation."