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La Cosa Nostra in Italy: Who is the mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro and how did they manage to catch him?

2023-01-16T16:34:41.557Z


He joined mafia life from a young age. Murderer and playboy with expensive tastes, he was a fugitive for 30 years. Details and mysteries of his capture.


He suffered from colon cancer and had to undergo chemotherapy when Matteo Messina Denaro, the most wanted criminal in Italy,

was arrested this Monday morning .

The mafia boss was in line with other patients to undergo chemotherapy at the Palermo clinic that treated his colon cancer, when he spotted the policemen approaching him and

tried to flee by walking quickly

to the internal bar, near the entrance, where they caught him

"I'm Matteo Messina Denaro," he admitted without resisting.

In the clinic where he had been treated for more than a year, he was known by the false name of

Andrea Bonafede

.

The veteran mafioso

Giovanni Lupini

who was always with him when he visited the clinic accompanied him and was also captured.

More than a hundred police officers from the special services, the ROS,

surrounded the medical center

and hundreds more were mobilized, directed from a barracks.

Messina Denaro was taken to a police station and

then to an airport

, from where he left in a special plane to "a

maximum security

prison structure, " according to reports.

Thirty years on the run


Thus concluded thirty years of fugitive from justice accumulated by the then young character of Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia, as the

son of Don Chicho

, the boss of the organization in Trapani that Matteo inherited.

Matteo Messina Denaro, at the time of his arrest.

Photo: Reuters

From a very young age he had joined the mafia life.

He was also a favorite of Salvatore "Totó" Riina, the boss of the bosses of Cosa Nostra, whose arrest this Sunday marked the 30th anniversary of his arrest in Palermo by the police.

Matteo Messina Denaro only had to wait for Bernardo Lorenzano's interim as head of Cosa Nostra and later inherited his position when

he was also captured

.

The period of the ruthless government of "Totó" Riina was characterized as that of

the terrorist mafia

and left a long list of

bloody attacks and deaths

that made it the toughest in mafia history.

Messina Denaro

is the last capo of the capos of this period

.

The chief prosecutor of Palermo, Maurizio De Luzia, who has been leading the investigations for years and this Monday was with the police commander in the final operation to capture him, clarified: "We must not think that the Mafia is finished after this arrest." .

Mafia car bomb against investigator Paolo Borsellino and his guards in Sicily, in 1992. Photo: AP

“The mafia exists and has changed.

It does not commit more havoc, we do not see as many deaths as in the past.

It is a mafia that has changed its face, but it is still

just as dangerous

”.

Justice Minister Carlo Nordio acknowledged that "with the arrest of Messina Denaro

, one of the most dramatic stations

in the history of the Republic comes to an end."

And he added: "With the capture of the last super-fugitive, the daily commitment to the fight against any mafia is renewed."

a super-criminal


Matteo Messina Denaro, whose face was known through digital reconstructions.

Photo: AP

The reaction of the magistrates to the capture frames the extraordinary importance of the arrest of a super-criminal whose face was known through digital reconstructions.

Only now, with Messina Denaro being flown to a maximum security prison far from Sicily, is the transition from the old all-powerful, terrorist mafia to the new mafia complete.

Above all, it helps to dig deeper into the truth of the secrets not yet revealed.

We must not think that the Mafia is finished after this arrest."


Chief Prosecutor of Palermo, Maurizio De Luzia

Only Messina Denaro was missing.

Many mafia bosses have been in prison for thirty years with the application of special laws that

do not allow them to go free

.

Also him, with the cascade of arrest warrants that he has accumulated dodging in the role of Mafia Ghost, impossible to arrest, that made him an icon.

His family kingdom was the triangle between

Castelvetrano, Marsala and Trapani

, which was long in the hands of Francesco, his father.

There his fame grew and his status as a favorite of the leaders of Cosa Nostra, with Riina at the head.

Those who challenged the power of Trapaneses and Corleoneses

had a tragic end

, like the four of the Alcamo family,

strangled and dissolved in acid

.

"His father,

good cheer

, was a

brave friend of mine

," Riina commented in the maximum security prison where another mafioso was imprisoned, unaware that everything he spoke

was rigorously recorded.

Salvatore Toto Riina.

Photo: archive

Matteo had been one of the protagonists of the terrorist strategy with which Riina had strengthened her power and even made

contact with the political world.

This Monday, the head of government Giorgia Meloni, who traveled to Palermo to participate in the celebrations for the arrest of Messina Denaro, said in Rome:

"This is a great victory for the State against the mafia."

One of his tributes in Palermo was in front of the building where

the greatest hero of the fight against Cosa Nostra

lived , judge Giovanni Falcone.

At a kind of altar where daily homage is paid to her memory, Prime Minister Meloni remembered the other four victims of the mafia terrorist attack that cost them their lives in May 1992.

the head of government Giorgia Meloni who traveled to Palermo to participate in the celebrations for the arrest of Messina.

Photo: EFE

The four were

his wife, also a magistrate, and three policemen from the escort

, blown up with explosives placed under the highway that leads from the airport to Palermo.

Also the other hero of the fight against the mafia, the prosecutor Paolo Borsellino, died after Falcone in another terrorist attack that also killed five police officers who were guarding him, on July 19, 1993.

Palermo airport today bears the name Falcone Borsellino in homage to the two most revered victims of that terrible time.

The Messina Denaro bombings


The capture of Totó Riina was a hard blow for the mafia, but Cosa Nostra, with participation in the Messina Denaro operations,

continued to carry out attacks in Florence, Rome and Milan

in which ten people died.

They were attacks directed against the Italian political power in order to

force the State to negotiate

under the conditions imposed by Cosa Nostra.

The last boss of the bosses, who also represented that era, is accused with a request to life imprisonment for

dozens of homicides

.

Among them, the adolescent Giuseppe Di Matteo, strangled and dissolved in acid.

It was

a response to the father

who had "repented" and told the magistrates many secrets of the terrorist mafia of those years.

Matteo's has been a capture of the

largest mafia leader

of the era started by "Totó" Riina.

Hundreds of carabineros and police officers

have been employed to capture him.

And in the effort to detect it, the State has used

extraordinary resources

in these thirty years as a fugitive.

Hundreds of carabinieri and police officers have been employed to capture Matteo Messina.

Photo: Reuters

“The state does not surrender to the mafia,

” Prime Minister Meloni said.

Italian President Sergio Mattarella, a Sicilian from Palermo whose older brother was president of the region and was assassinated by Cosa Nostra,

congratulated all involved in the capture.

A capture with

mysteries


There are many mysteries that accompany his capture.

He will have to

rebuild his prolonged flight of thirty years

with the support of a mafia structure that helped him avoid jail.

From himself he remains the image of

a playboy

who used Rayban glasses and elegant shirts.

He always represented much less years than he had and

he was very busy conquering women

.

He was known to love Porsches and gold Rolex watches.

He was manic about video games and comics, especially

Diabolix

.

Some gave him that nickname.

But so much information was known about Matteo Messina Denaro and

clear images of his face were practically never seen

.

Testimonies always arrived, half-tone revelations about the super-fugitive.

It was learned that in Barcelona they had operated on the retina in an ophthalmological clinic.

His past is still surrounded by mysteries.

Rome, correspondent

ap​


look also

mobsters among us

30 years after the murder of judge Giovanni Falcone, his sister is still waiting for answers

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2023-01-16

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