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Spontaneous celebrations in Palermo: residents of the Sicilian city shed tears of joy, applaud and shake hands with hooded police officers.
The occasion: The supreme godfather of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, Matteo Messina Denaro, was arrested on Monday - after 30 years underground.
Frank Hornig, DER SPIEGEL
»Matteo Messina Denaro comes from a mafia era that people actually thought was long gone, from the 1980s, from the early 1990s.
He was one of the clan chiefs in Sicily.
Denaro played a major role in these bloody assassinations during this period of kidnappings, car bombs, attacks on leading, prominent mafia hunters in Italy.
One of the most famous was Falcone, Giovanni Falcone, Paolo Borsellino.
Both were murdered in spectacular attacks in 1992.
And Denaro is one of the masterminds behind these assassinations.”
An illness of the mafioso apparently put the investigators on Denaro's track.
Investigators were informed that the mafiosi had a rare type of cancer.
The investigation eventually led to an alleged surveyor named Andrea Bonafede, who was the same age as the wanted person and suffered from the same illness.
The man was treated regularly at the La Maddalena private clinic in Palermo.
On January 16, special units of the Italian carabinieri attacked there.
Denaro was caught - a huge satisfaction for the investigators.
Frank Hornig, DER SPIEGEL
»The security forces, the judiciary, not only felt abandoned by politics, but also by society, a society in Sicily, Calabria, which was intimidated by bloody attacks and kidnappings.
Yes, of course it's a climate in which people simply don't dare.
Nobody goes to the police, reports someone, the Omertá, the code of silence, these are of course things that are incredibly important in such circumstances and make the investigators' work more difficult or almost impossible.
And when you talk to investigators, which I often did, they also say: the fight against the mafia cannot be won without a change in society.«
For many Italians, the success of the manhunt in Sicily is a glimmer of hope.
'It's about time, that's good news.
We thank the police.'
'I was very surprised by the news.
I know this story from my childhood.
It seemed to me that nothing would ever change.”
“For me, this is a victory for society, for all good, honest Italians and for all police officers, judges and so on.”
Italy's Prime Minister also celebrated the arrest.
Giorgia Meloni, Italian Prime Minister
»Today is a historic day, a day to celebrate.
It is a day of celebration for good people, for the families of organized crime victims, because the sacrifice of so many heroes has not been in vain, because someone has taken up their legacy and the war has continued.”
Frank Hornig, DER SPIEGEL
»I think you can see that she has such a determined attitude against the mafia, as long as you can say that after a few months in office.
One of her first acts was, in fact, to tighten an anti-mafia law that she flew right under, from Rome to Palermo thanking the security forces for visiting the monument to Falcone.
Of course, these are all signals that don’t seem bad at first glance.«
Meloni also said the war against the mafia was not won - but the arrest was a significant victory.
And yet: Organized crime in Italy remains very powerful even after Denaro's arrest.
The mafia in Sicily may be weakened now, but the music was already playing in other regions of the country.
Frank Hornig, DER SPIEGEL
»But the question is of course as far as the mafia in Italy is concerned: where is the Cosa Nostra?
The Sicilian Mafia, for example, compared to Camorra in the Naples area, or compared to the 'Ndrangheta in Calabria, at the southern tip of the Italian boot?
And it's just that the 'Ndrangheta is the much more dangerous, bigger, richer, more powerful, internationally networked organization today.«
And yet the signal of the arrest is that something is possibly moving in Italian society – more support for the mafia hunters, less support for the mafiosi.