ROME — The fugitive Cosa Nostra godfather, Matteo Messina Denaro, has been captured in Sicily after 30 years on the run.
Messina Denaro was number one on Italy’s most wanted list of mafia fugitives and had been on the run since 1993. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for dozens of murders and ordering the 1990s mafia war on the Italian state, in which high profile institutional figures and prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were blown up.
Messina Denaro, 60, was arrested in a clinic in Palermo where he was receiving treatment, according to police Carabinieri general Pasquale Angelosanto.
As the van carrying him passed through the streets of Palermo, police wearing balaclavas could be seen hugging, and locals clapped.
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The arrest will be seen as a win for Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government. Meloni says that she went into politics because of mafia murders and made fighting “the cancer” of the mob a top priority in her maiden speech to parliament. Her first piece of legislation blocked the abolition of a harsher prison regime intended for mafia convicts. In a statement, Meloni called the arrest “a great victory for the state which demonstrates that it does not give up in the face of the mafia.” She added: “The fight against mafia crime will continue without respite under this government.”
Deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, leader of Meloni’s coalition partner the League, said: “After thirty years on the run, the superboss Matteo Messina Denaro has ended up in handcuffs… It’s a beautiful day for Italy and one that serves as a warning to the mafia: the institutions and our heroes in uniform never give up.”
The arrest is hugely symbolic for Italy’s decades-long struggle against the mafia.
Meloni flew to Palermo on Monday to congratulate the prosecutors and police who caught Messina Denaro, stopping to pay tribute at the memorial for the murdered prosecutor Giovanni Falcone, who was blown up on Messina Denaro’s orders in 1992.
Meloni proposed the day of the arrest be marked with a new national holiday in honor of those who fight the mafia. She told journalists outside the court in Palermo that the war against the mob was not over, but the holiday would help “to tell our children that the mafia can be beaten.”
Messina Denaro had been receiving cancer treatment for a year under a false name, in one of Palermo’s most exclusive private clinics. He was immediately taken to the Carabinieri barracks then to a heliport to be flown out of Sicily to a secret location to prevent any rescue attempts.
At a press conference on Monday, prosecutors said that Messina Denaro had remained head of the Sicilian mafia “until yesterday.”
Police carabinieri general Pasquale Angelosanto said he had been identified by his health condition. “For some time we knew about his health difficulties and and so we concentrated on a few individuals and then just one individual who needed a certain treatment. We knew that person would be at the health center this morning.”
Minister for Justice Carlo Nordio said that with the capture “one of the most dramatic chapters in the history the Republic of Italy comes to an end.”
But others said that the mafia cannot be defeated merely by arresting leaders, but by changing the culture.
Massimiliano Iervolino, leader of the Italian Radicals said that it was “disturbing that it took 30 years. This shows that the state has no control in part of the Italian territory, and that the collaboration between organized crime and politics continues.”
Relatives of Messina Denaro’s victims expressed some satisfaction at the arrest. Nicola Di Matteo, whose 12-year-old brother was strangled and dissolved in acid told news agency La Presse. “We are happy with the arrest but what he did cannot be forgiven … I wish him the same suffering as my brother.”
