Notorious mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro has been arrested, Italian media report. He was apprehended Monday in Palermo, on the island of Sicily. Messina Denaro, a fugitive for 30 years, was Italy’s most wanted mafioso.
He was regarded as one of the leaders of the Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia. “The Carabinieri arrested the fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro at a health centre in Palermo, where he was undergoing clinical treatment,” said Pasquale Angelosanto, the head of the Italian gendarmerie.
Denaro has already been sentenced in absentia to life in prison for the 1992 murders of judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. The two judges were known for prosecuting Mafiosi. He also received a life sentence for the bombings in Florence, Rome, and Milan that killed 10 people in 1993.
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In addition, the mafia boss was allegedly involved in the kidnapping, two-year torture, and eventual murder of the boy Giuseppe Di Matteo. He was murdered and dissolved in acid because his father had testified against the Mafia.
Although he had been a fugitive since 1993, police assumed that Messina Denaro was still capable of running the mafia. According to the BBC, prosecutors and informants believe that Denaro holds information and names of those involved in high-profile crimes by the mafia.
