The boss of bosses of the Sicilian mafia Cosa Nostra, Matteo Messina Denaro, was arrested today when he went to a hospital in Palermo (south) to treat cancer, a “historic” arrest that ends the 30-year long escape of this criminal, the most wanted in Italy and one of the most dangerous in the world.
The mobster, fugitive since 1993was arrested next to the La Maddalena hospital in the Sicilian capital to treat colon cancer that he had suffered for a year under the false identity of Andra Bonafede, 59 years old.
A large police contingent was waiting for him and surrounded the clinic, also for the safety of his patients, and stopped him when he was going to enter without his resisting, Palermo prosecutor Maurizio De Lucia explained at a press conference. Immediately afterwards,
(The capture is) a great victory of the State
Born in Castelvetrano, in the Sicilian province of Trapani, Messina Denaro, who is now 60 years old, must serve several life sentences for the 1993 bombings in Florence, Rome and Milan in which ten people died.
Messina Denaro, wearing a brown fur coat, hat and a watch valued at 35,000 euros, was put into a police van and taken out of the clinic wrapped in a strong security device, while some policemen hugged and congratulated each other.
His driver, Giovanni Luppino, “an unknown subject” was arrested with him, something obvious if one takes into account that the last thing he wanted was to attract attention.
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The commander of the Carabinieri (Italian militarized police), Pasquale Angelosanto, said that investigations have involved “many years”but in “the last period” attention was focused on the state of health of the “capo of capos”, because it was known that he was sick.
Matteo Messina is also considered the mastermind behind the bombs that caused the death of the two anti-mafia magistrates in 1992, Paolo Borsellino and Giovani Falcone, his wife, Francesca Morvillo, and eight escort agents.
A long and discreet work
The mafia has not been defeated, the most serious mistake would be to think so
Investigators have worked “discreetly” and by piece in recent times, even at Christmas, to try to identify a date, until they learned that it would be today, January 16, when the mobster would go to the clinic.
Police officer Alberto Arcidiacono affirmed that the criminal “he didn’t pretend to be someone else” because, on the other hand, “just looking at him there was little to verify”, given his great resemblance to the robot portraits that were made of him. The Palermo Prosecutor’s Office has found no evidence to suspect a possible involvement of the hospital.
But prosecutor De Lucia assured that the investigations are now focused on “the current protections that he has enjoyed” in his long clandestinity. Because, he warned: “The mafia has not been defeated, the most serious mistake would be to think so.”
A victory for the state
Commander Angelosanto opted to continue attacking the clans because, he stressed, the more than one hundred arrests of his entourage in the last decade and the hundreds of millions of euros seized “have irretrievably weakened” his criminal support network.
The country received the arrest of this criminal with surprise and joy and the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, released her schedule in Rome to travel immediately to Palermo and congratulate the agents responsible for this action, “a great victory for the State.”
The head of state, Sergio Mattarella, Sicilian Whom the mob murdered his own brother, He also expressed his “congratulations” for the arrest of this gangster.
The man behind the criminal
I regret some things in my life and one is not having studied
Messina Denaro was born on April 26, 1962 in the Sicilian town of Castelveltrano, within a dynasty of gangsters led by his father, Don Ciccio, author of a fruitful alliance with the Corleone clan, of the “capos” Bernardo Provenzano and “Totò” Riina.
Despite being the most wanted man in Italy, it did not prevent him from traveling to Barcelona, Spain, to undergo eye surgery, as several investigations have shown.
Known as “U Seccu” (the dry one, in Sicilian, due to his thin complexion), it is known that he read a lotHe was shrewd and in his youth considered himself a good student.
This was revealed in a letter collected in the book “L’invisibile” (2012): “I regret some things in my life and one is not having studied. It was one of the great mistakes of my life. My greatest anger is that I was a good student but I got distracted by other things,” he wrote in the letter intercepted in 2015 by the police.
What distracted him from his studies, in effect, was to take the reins of the dangerous Cosa Nostra of his main mentor, “Totò Riina”, a job that would force him to go into hiding for three decades, since the summer of 1993.
Messina Denaro must serve the various life sentences to which he was sentenced in the past for his countless bloodshed in clan fights, attacks and crimes, such as the kidnapping of a child, Giuseppe Di Matteo, murdered and dissolved in acid because his father, a gangster, was collaborating with justice.
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The prosecutor declared his “pride” for this operation that, he said, “partly pays off a debt of the Republic with the victims.”
Because Messina Denaro is, he said, “the last kingpin” of the era of the attacks, the one that sowed terror in Italy in the 1990s and that in 1992 killed magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borselino, pioneers in the fight against Cosa Nostra and today more remembered than ever.
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The power of the considered last boss of Cosa Nostra, the last of the ‘Corleoneses’, is demonstrated not only in his extensive network of contacts and figureheads that he has procured over the years, but can also be quantified in the more than 4,000 million euros that has been confiscated from those around them.
Of the only a few photographs from 30 years ago were available and the last robot portrait includes new details entrusted to the Police by some of the detainees from their environment.
The new image describes him as somewhat older, with dyed black hair, with a little more weight, but above all without the dark glasses with which he was known due to vision problems.
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