The police celebrated with great enthusiasm in the Netherlands last week what they thought was one of their greatest achievements against the mafia: the arrest of the main boss of Cosa Nostra.
The jubilation was short-lived: the agents mistakenly arrested a British man who has nothing to do with the Sicilian mafia.
Officers thought they had recognized Matteo Messina Denaro, 59, who has been on the run for almost three decades, in a restaurant in The Hague, who is blamed for dozens of homicides and bomb attacks during the 1990s. His victims are allegedly among the victims. children and pregnant women.
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It was however Mark L., a 54-year-old man, born and raised in the United Kingdom, a fan of Formula 1, who was sharing a table with his son.
The man was "more than surprised" to learn the reason for his arrest, his lawyer Leon van Kleef told The Washington Post.
But "it was [only] a matter of time before the situation was resolved."
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After being transferred to a maximum security prison in the Netherlands, Mark L. was taken to testify in court to testify to prosecutors.
He was eventually released after authorities confirmed that he was not the man they believed to have arrested, in accordance with the European arrest warrant against the Italian kingpin.
Dutch prosecutors have dropped the case, Van Kleef confirmed.
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Messina Denaro, also known as
Diabolik
after a comic book character, has become the great obsession of the Italian authorities.
He lost track of him after a vacation in Tuscany in 1993 and has not been seen since.
That year he allegedly participated in the kidnapping and murder of a 12-year-old boy to force the silence of his father, also a mobster, who was going to collaborate with the authorities.
The body of the minor was finally dissolved in acid.
The kingpin, who was facing life in prison after being convicted of several murders, was sentenced to another life in absentia last October for his role in the 1992 murders of two anti-mafia prosecutors, according to Reuters news agencies.
With information from
The Washington Post
and
El País