Matteo Messina Denaro, known by his nickname "Diabolik", the leader of Cosa Nostra, was arrested this morning (Monday) in Palermo, according to the report of the Italian police.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Maloney called the arrest a "great victory."
Messina Denaro was arrested while staying at a private hospital in Palermo.
His story appeared in the "World's Most Wanted Criminals" series that airs on Netflix.
Messina Denaro is the most wanted mafia boss in Italy and the godfather of the Sicilian mafia "Cosa Nostra".
He escaped from the authorities in 1993.
Denaro was sentenced in absentia to life in prison for his involvement in the 1992 murders of prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
He is also facing a life sentence for his role in the attacks in Florence, Rome and Milan in which ten people were killed in 1993.
The power of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra has waned over the past two decades as a result of a determined government crackdown following the assassination of two senior judges in 1992.
The picture of the wanted person (photo: official website, Wikipedia)
Matteo Messina Denaro (photo: screenshot, Twitter)
Palermo Massacre in 1992 (photo: official website, By Unknown author - http://www.wikimafia.it/wiki/images/7/75/Via_palestro.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/ w/index.php?curid=38888487)
According to the police, in 2022 he was still giving instructions on how the mafia was run in the city of Prapani in western Sicily, his old stronghold, even though he had disappeared.
In 2017, Salvatore "Toto" Reina, one of the most powerful heads of the Sicilian mafia in the 20th century who was convicted of responsibility for dozens of murders, died at the age of 87, after almost a quarter of a century behind prison walls.
Reyna died in the prison ward of a hospital in Perma, the city where he served his sentence - 26 life sentences - for murders that occurred between 1969 and 1992.
Among the victims, there were two judges who led investigations of the top mafia figures.
"The Beast", as Reina was nicknamed, began his criminal career on the streets of the town of Corleone, after World War II, and became the big boss of the Sicilian mafia when it reached its peak during the century.
He led Cosa Nostra, "Our Thing", during its economic boom, which included trafficking heroin to the East Coast of the United States and blackmailing politicians in Palmero and Rome.
Raina's arrest in January 1993, after 20 years on the run from the law, happened only a few months after the two judges were killed on his orders and at a time when the corrupt political system in Italy was collapsing.
Messina Denaro, an ally of Reina who has been evading authorities for the past 25 years, is now the highest-ranking Mafia figure yet to be caught.
Salvatore "Toto" Reina (photo: official website, Wikipedia)
What is Cosa Nostra?
"Cosa Nostra" is the Sicilian mafia, or simply "the mafia".
The meaning of the phrase is "our thing".
In the early 1920s, the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini almost eliminated the mafia, but after World War II, the American authorities released many of the imprisoned members of the mafia and they renewed the organization's activities.
This activity was concentrated in urban Palermo, and included extortion, smuggling and involvement in business, industry and construction.
Some Mafia members immigrated to the United States.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the United States was subject to a wave of gangs and gangsters who took over entire neighborhoods through violence and criminal activity.
The Italian gangs expanded their hold and created agreements among themselves.
In the 1960s gangs, by the 1960s, had developed a powerful syndicate known as Cosa Nostra, which was deeply rooted in institutions and businesses in the United States.
In the late 1970s, the Mafia in Palermo became increasingly involved in the production and export of heroin to the United States.
The huge profits sparked intense competition between different clans within the mafia, resulting in a wave of murders, which led the government to arrest the organization's leadership.
In 1987, a trial of 338 members of the Sicilian mafia were convicted of a variety of crimes.
At the end of the twentieth century, the role of the Mafia in organized crime in the United States weakened.
Convictions of senior leaders, defections of members who sided with the government, and internal strife filtered the ranks.
In addition, the disintegration of isolated communities from Sicily that immigrated to the United States, and their assimilation into American society damaged the tradition and way of education of the Mafia.
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