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Matteo Messina Denaro, the nation’s most-wanted Mafia boss who has been on the run since 1993, has been arrested in a non-public hospital within the Sicilian capital of Palermo.
Prosecutors say Messina Denaro, 60, is a boss of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra Mafia.
He had been sentenced in absentia to a life time period for his position within the 1992 murders of anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
Police mentioned they detained him at Palermo’s La Maddalena hospital on Monday morning, within the metropolis’s northern suburbs.
Photographs on social media confirmed locals applauding and shaking arms with police in balaclavas as a minivan believed to include the suspect was pushed away.
Messina Denaro had been having appointments on the hospital for a while, Italy’s Ansa information company reported, including that the police had secretly moved officers into the constructing in a single day to safeguard different sufferers.
Italian information companies mentioned he’s believed to be affected by most cancers.
Messina Denaro additionally faces a life sentence for his position in bomb assaults in Florence, Rome and Milan which killed 10 folks the next 12 months.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hailed the arrest as “an incredible victory for the state that exhibits it by no means provides up within the face of the Mafia”.
The arrest comes nearly 30 years to the day for the reason that police arrested Salvatore “Toto” Riina, the Sicilian Mafia’s strongest boss of the 20th century.
He ultimately died in jail in 2017, having by no means damaged his code of silence.
– Reuters
