January 16, 2023: a day to mark in red on your calendar. The mafia boss was arrested today by the Carabinieri del Ros Matthew Messina Money. It was fugitive for 30 years and his capture comes 30 years and one day after that of boss Totò Riina.
The arrest of Matteo Messina Denaro
Matteo Messina Denaro was arrested inside the "La Maddalena" private clinic in Palermo, where he had gone under a false name - he called himself Andrea Bonafede - to "undergo therapy", reports the commander of the Ros of the carabinieri Pasquale Angelosanto who informs that at the time of his arrest Messina Denaro he did not resist. However, the boss understood that something was "wrong" and he had tried to flee for the umpteenth time. He was stopped in a bar inside the structure. At 9,35 he was loaded onto a black van by the military, escorted by several carabinieri gazelles, and taken to the barracks of the San Lorenzo carabinieri company. He would no longer be there however, he would have been taken away on board in a helicopter, to be transferred to a secret location, as happened 30 years ago for Totò Riina. The capture of the fugitive was accepted by the applause and screams of dozens of Palermitans, who came to congratulate the carabinieri and celebrate historic news, expected for decades.
The investigation that led to the arrest of the Castelvetrano (Tp) mafia boss was coordinated by the Palermo prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia and the deputy prosecutor Paolo Guido.
Messina Denaro, reports Ansa which cites investigative sources, periodically carried out checks in that structure, which last night during the Ros blitz had been secured with several dozen men to protect all the other patients. She was in that clinic this morning for a day hospital due to an oncological disease. He would in fact be suffering from colon cancer.
"The president of the RepublicSergio Mattarella, telephoned the Minister of the Interior and the Commander of the Carabinieri this morning to express his congratulations on the arrest of Matteo Messina Denaro, carried out in close collaboration with the Judiciary". This can be read in a note from the Quirinale.
"A great victory for the state who demonstrates that he does not give up in the face of the mafia”: the Prime Minister celebrates Giorgia Meloni. “The day after the anniversary of the arrest of Totò Riina, another head of organized crime is brought to justice.
Who was Matteo Messina Denaro
Known in the mafia environment with the nickname of "U siccu" (the thin one, ed.) Matteo Messina Denaro was the son of the old mafia boss of Castelvetrano (Tp) Ciccio, a historic ally of the Corleonesi of Totò Riina.
He had become a fugitive in the summer of 1993 after the mafia massacres in Rome, Milan and Florence. The decision to "disappear" had been announced in a letter written to his girlfriend at the time, Angela: "You will hear about me", he wrote to her, implying that he was aware that shortly thereafter his name would be associated with serious made of blood, "They will paint me as a devil, but it's all falsehoods". He was last seen in public while on vacation at Marble Fort, in Tuscany, in August 1993.
Messina Denaro was at the top of the list highly dangerous fugitives, a list drawn up by the Integrated Joint Group for the Search of the Most Dangerous Fugitives (GIIRL) of the Central Directorate of the Criminal Police in the context of the Special Research Program, which includes criminals considered to be extremely dangerous. The magazine "Forbes" had included it among the ten most dangerous fugitives in the world. For decades, investigators have looked for him everywhere, from Venezuela to Eastern Europe, but in the end he was found in Palermo, not far from home.
The Trapani mafia boss was sentenced to life imprisonment for dozens of murders, including that of the small Joseph DiMatteo – the son of the repentant strangled and dissolved in acid after almost two years of imprisonment – for the massacres of '92, costing the lives of the judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellinor, and for the attacks of '93 a Milan, Florence and Rome.
The arrest made this morning by the Carabinieri del Ros puts an end to a record fugitive, longer than that of Totò Riina, arrested after 23 years on the run, and second only to that of Bernardo Provenzano, captured after 38 years. And just after the latter ended up in jail, Messina Denaro became the head of Cosa Nostra. With his arrest, the era of the Corleonesi ended.
