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Italy’s most wanted man, a mafia godfather who was so elusive that he was referred to as “the ghost”, has been captured after 30 years on the run, amid questions over how he could have evaded arrest for so long.
The arrest of Matteo Messina Denaro deals a blow to Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia network which has already been eclipsed by other Italian crime syndicates such as the “Ndrangheta of Calabria”.
The 60-year-old fugitive was arrested by an elite squad of police in a private clinic in Palermo, the regional capital of Sicily, where he had been having treatment for an undisclosed illness, possibly cancer, for more than a year.
He had registered at the medical facility under a false name, Andrea Bonafede.
He did not put up any resistance, police said. Officers wearing bullet-proof jackets and black balaclavas punched the air and embraced each other in celebration.
Onlookers cheered as police vehicles with their sirens blaring drove through the streets of Palermo.
Wearing tinted glasses, a leather jacket lined with sheepskin and a woollen hat, Messina Denaro was led from the clinic into a police van by armed officers, some dressed in military fatigues and combat helmets.
It was the first image of him seen by the outside world in three decades.
Convicted of dozens of murders, he faces multiple life sentences and the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison.
One of his most sickening crimes was to have a 12-year-old boy kidnapped, strangled and dissolved in a vat of acid. He also strangled to death the pregnant girlfriend of a mafia rival.
Murdered enough people to ‘fill a cemetery’
Believed to be the boss of Cosa Nostra, he had been on the run since 1993, fleeing charges of murder, the illegal possession of explosives, robbery and mafia association.
But during the three decades in which he went underground, he was still in active command of Cosa Nostra, issuing orders to his lieutenants from secret locations across Sicily.
To his victims and enemies, he was a ruthless killer, but to his supporters he was a glamorous playboy who loved fast cars, smart clothes and women…
