NOTW – Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, Italy’s most wanted man, arrested in Sicily

Matteo Messina Denaro, one of the bosses of the Cosa Nostra Mafia in Sicily and Italy’s most wanted man, has been arrested by police while being treated in a private health clinic in Palermo, prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia said. He had been a fugitive since 1993 and was considered by Europol one of the most wanted men in Europe, de Lucia told CNN. “It is a victory for all the police forces that have worked together over these long years to bring the dangerous fugitive to justice,” Italy’s chief of Police, Lamberto Giannini, said in a statement congratulating the Carabinieri – Italy’s military police – and the Palermo Public Prosecutor’s Office. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni tweeted: “A great victory for the state, which demonstrates that it does not give up in the face of the Mafia.” Messina Denaro is thought to have ordered dozens of Mafia-related murders and was given several life sentences in absentia for his many crimes, most notably in 1992 for his involvement in the separate murders of anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. He received his most recent life sentence in 2020 for fatal bombings in Milan, Florence and Rome in the late 1990s, […]