Italian police announced the arrest of the wanted No. 1 in Italy and convicted mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, Monday, in a private clinic in Palermo, Sicily, after he managed to escape for 30 years.
Messina Denaro was arrested at the clinic where he was being treated for an undisclosed medical condition, said Gen. Pascual Angelosanto, who heads the police force’s special operations squad.
Italian state television reported that the police took Messina Denaro to a secret location immediately after his arrest.
Messina Denaro was 30 years old when he went into hiding.
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Even on the run, Messina Denaro, with a power base in western Sicily, was considered a boss of Cosa Nostra (the Sicilian mafia).
He was the last of three high-profile mafia bosses on the run for decades who evaded capture for decades.
Messina Denaro, who was tried in absentia and convicted of dozens of murders, faces several life sentences.
He is due to be imprisoned for two bombings in Sicily in 1992 that killed two top anti-mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
Among the other horrific crimes he was convicted of was the murder of the young son of a renegade Mafia member, who was strangled and his body analyzed in a vat of acid.
Monday’s arrest came 30 years and a day after convicted “mafia boss” Salvatore “Toto” Riina was arrested in a Palermo apartment after 23 years on the run.
