Sunday, 17 Nov 2024

Tipoff about medical care led to arrest of mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro

Tipoff about medical care led to arrest of mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro


Tipoff about medical care led to arrest of mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro
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Matteo Messina Denaro, 60, who has been in hiding since 1993, was apprehended as he came out of the private La Maddalena health facility on the outskirts of the Sicilian city, where special forces had been on guard since authorities first learned of his whereabouts three days ago. He was wearing luxury clothes and a ¤38,000 (£33,700) watch.

Investigators recounted that, at about 8.30am, Denaro, wearing a white wool cap, tinted eyeglasses and a brown sheepskin coat, had gone to the clinic with a sheet of paper in his hand containing the negative result of a Covid test, a mandatory requirement for those like him who have to undergo therapy and a series of blood tests.

When the police broke into the building to arrest him, Denaro allegedly tried to flee but, on realising he was surrounded, did not put up any resistance. The police had already blocked all escape routes from the clinic and the roads.

Some who witnessed the arrest, and understood that the man taken away in handcuffs was the notorious Sicilian boss, applauded the police, pumping their fists in the air.

Nicknamed Diabolik or U Siccu (the skinny one), Denaro was born in Castelvetrano, Sicily, in 1962. His father was a powerful Cosa Nostra boss and Denaro thrived in the family business, building an illicit multibillion-euro empire in the waste disposal, wind energy and retail sectors.

According to mafia informers and prosecutors, he holds the key to some of the most heinous crimes perpetrated by the Sicilian mafia, including the bomb attacks that killed the anti-mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. In 2002, he was convicted and sentenced in absentia to life in prison for having personally killed or ordered the murders of dozens of people.

Investigators said they had been monitoring patients in Sicily for months who were suffering from the same disease as Denaro and the same age as him.

Some photos of Denaro after his arrest show how his face is very similar to the digital reconstruction of his appearance made by the Italian authorities, using the latest computer technology and information provided by mafia informers. The quest to locate Denaro was complicated by the near-complete absence of recent photographs, with only a few identity photos taken in the late 1980s and early 90s.

Despite his powerful protection network, Denaro became increasingly isolated in recent years, according to mafia informants. Italian police investigators relentlessly seized his businesses and arrested more than 100 of his confederates, including cousins, nephews and his sister.

After his arrest he was taken to a military barracks and then to an airport, where he will be transferred to a secret location. Soon Denaro will be moved to a maximum-security prison outside Sicily, in common with other captured mafia bosses.

De Lucia, however, cautioned that even if the state had won this match against the mafia today, the Cosa Nostra was not dead.

In September 2021, a 54-year-old Briton from Liverpool was handcuffed at a restaurant in The Hague in the Netherlands by heavily armed police, who pulled a hood over his head and dragged him out in front of dozens of terrified customers. The arrest came after Italy allegedly asked the Dutch authorities for the execution of an international arrest warrant, believing the man was Denaro. He was released a few days later.

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