Mafia boss Messina Denaro arrested in Sicily after 30 years on the run

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Matteo Messina Denaro was at a hospital when he was arrested say police. /Carabinieri/Reuters

Italy's most wanted mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, who had been on the run for three decades, has been arrested, police have said.

Sicilian police swooped on a private hospital in the capital Palermo on Monday morning where he had gone for treatment.

It was reported in Italian media that he was taken to a secret location by the Carabinieri after his arrest. Over 100 members of the armed forces are believed to have been involved in the arrest.

Prosecutors say Messina Denaro is a boss of Sicily's Cosa Nostra mafia.

He has been sentenced in absentia to a life term for his role in the 1992 murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. He also faces a life sentence for his role in bomb attacks in Florence, Rome and Milan which killed 10 people the following year.

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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called the arrest "a great victory for the state that shows it never gives up in the face of the mafia."

Police said in September 2022 that Messina Denaro was still able to issue commands relating to the way the mafia was run in the area around the western Sicilian city of Trapani, his regional stronghold, despite his long disappearance.

Messina Denaro, who comes from the small town of Castelvetrano near Trapani, is accused by prosecutors of being solely or jointly responsible for numerous other murders in the 1990s.

In 1993 he helped organize the kidnapping of a 12-year-old boy, Giuseppe Di Matteo, in an attempt to dissuade his father from giving evidence against the mafia, prosecutors say. The boy was held in captivity for two years before he was strangled and his body dissolved in acid.

Source(s): Reuters