Italy’s No. 1 fugitive, Matteo Messina Denaro, a convicted Mafia boss who ordered some of the nation’s most heinous killings, was arrested Monday at a private clinic in Sicily after three decades on the run, Italian paramilitary police said.
Messina Denaro was captured at the Palermo clinic where he was receiving treatment for an undisclosed medical condition, according to Carabinieri Gen. Pasquale Angelosanto, who heads the police force’s special operations squad.
A pair of Carabinieri officers, each holding an arm, walked him down the front steps of the upscale clinic and led him to a waiting black van in pouring rain. Messina Denaro was wearing a brown leather jacket trimmed in shearling, a matching white-and-brown skull cap and his trademark tinted glasses. His face looked wan and he stared straight ahead.
A young man when he went into hiding, he is now 60. Messina Denaro, who had a power base near in the western Sicilian port city of Trapani, was considered Sicily’s Cosa Nostra top boss even while a fugitive.
He was the last of three longtime fugitive top-level Mafia bosses who had for decades eluded capture, and hundreds of police officers over the years had been tasked with tracking him down.
Italian news reports said that when Carabinieri came up to him in the clinic and asked if he were Messina Denaro, the fugitive admitted that he was.
Palermo Chief Prosecutor Maurizio De Lucia told Rai state TV that the fugitive had been using the pseudonym Andrea Bonafede. The last name roughly means “good faith” in Italian.
Shortly after his arrest, Messina Denaro appeared before a court in Palermo, where a judge sought to confirm his identity and ask basic questions to fill out documents.
Reminded by the judge that he must answer truthfully, Messina Denaro replied: “Aware.” When asked his occupation, he replied “farmer” and added that his brother was a banker and his four sisters homemakers.
