(ANSA) - REGGIO CALABRIA, MARCH 29 - The boss of the 'Ndrangheta Francesco Pelle, 43, was arrested in Lisbon.
According to what is learned, Pelle was found by the Carabinieri in a clinic in the Portuguese capital where he was being treated for Covid.
He was untraceable since 2007. Francesco Pelle is now stationed in the Hospital de Sao José in Lisbon, where he is hospitalized for the consequences of Covid.
To identify him, following the investigations of the carabinieri of Reggio Calabria, were the agents of the National Unit Against Terrorism (Unct) of the Portuguese police who received the information in the context of 'I Can', the project of the Central Directorate of the Criminal Police in collaboration with Interpol for the capture of fugitives and the aggression of the illegal assets of the 'Ndrangheta.
The teams were activated through the Interpol channels once the information gathered gave reasonable certainty that the offender was actually hospitalized.
Pelle, known as "Ciccio Pakistan", was definitively sentenced to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court in 2019 as the instigator of the Christmas massacre of 24 December 2006 in which Maria Strangio, wife of the opposing chieftain GiovanniLuca Nirta, was killed.
Episode, which in the San Luca feud between iPelle-Vottari and the Nirta-Strangio, was the prologue to the August 2007 massacre in Duisburg, Germany with 6 deaths.
Pelle - confined to a wheelchair after being wounded in an ambush on 31 July 2006 in Africo - at the time of escaping he was in Milan where he was subject to the obligation of residence just waiting for the sentence of the Supreme Court.
When that arrived, Pelle lost his tracks at the beginning of July.
Pelle had already spent a year on the run and was arrested by the carabinieri in September 2008 in a hospital in Pavia.
The ambush of Christmas 2006 which originated, as a reaction, the lastrage of Duisburg, had as its goal Gianluca Nirta, but his wife died while four people, including a child, were injured.
According to the reconstruction of the prosecution, Giovanni Strangio, Maria's cousin, later sentenced to life imprisonment, conceived the revenge of the following Ferragostos.
(HANDLE).