Matteo Messina Denaro the Sicilian Mafia boss, who has been a fugitive since 1993 and considered to be one of the most powerful mobsters in Italy, was arrested today.
Denaro is believed to be the current boss of the Sicilian Mafia and head of the Cosa Nostra and is wanted for multiple crimes, including murder and extortion. Italy’s Carabinieri police detained him, on Monday in the Sicilian capital Palermo at a clinic where he underwent treatment for an undisclosed medical condition.
Italy’s Prime Minister Giogia Meloni confirmed the arrest posting on Twitter: “A great victory for the State, which shows that it did not gave up in the face of the Mafia. On the eve of the anniversary of Totò Riina’s arrest, another leader of organised crime, Matteo Messina Denaro, is brought to justice.”
Salvatore “Toto” Riina was a Sicilian mafia boss, who led the Corleonesi crime family in the 1980s and early 1990s and was known as the “boss of bosses”. He was arrested 30 years ago, on January 15, 1993 and was sentenced to multiple life sentences for multiple murders, including those of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, and died in 2017 while serving his sentence.
Matteo Messina Denaro, now 60, was on the run since 1993, therefore he has been sentenced in absentia for multiple life sentences, including his role in the massacres of 1992 and the 1993 bomb attacks in Florence, Rome and Milan. Nicknamed “Diabolik”, Denaro once infamously claimed: “I filled a cemetery, all by myself”. Hundreds of armed forces members have reportedly been involved in hunting him down over the years and in today’s arrest. He is currently being transferred from Boccadifalco airport to a maximum-security prison facility, at secret location.
Source: mirror.co.uk
