- The country’s most wanted mafia boss was on the run for three decades.
- The arrest was praised as a “wonderful triumph.”
- He was convicted to life in prison in absentia.
Italy – Italian police said on Monday they had arrested Matteo Messina Denaro. The country’s most wanted mafia boss who had been on the run for three decades.
Prosecutors claim Messina Denaro is a Cosa Nostra mafia boss in Sicily.
He was convicted to life in prison in absentia for his role in the murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992.
He also faces life in prison for his role in the bombings in Florence, Rome, and Milan the following year, which killed ten people.
The arrest was praised as a “wonderful triumph for the state that proves it never gives up in the face of the mafia” by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Police indicated in September 2022 that Messina Denaro was still able to give directives relating to the way the mafia was conducted in the area around Trapani, his regional stronghold in western Sicily.
Prosecutors accuse Messina Denaro, of the small hamlet of Castelvetrano near Trapani, of being exclusively or jointly responsible for a number of additional murders committed in the 1990s.
Prosecutors believe he assisted in the kidnapping of a 12-year-old boy, Giuseppe Di Matteo, in 1993, in an attempt to prevent his father from testifying against the mafia. His body has been dissolved for years, and he has been dissolved for years.
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