On the run for thirty years, it was in the Maddalena private clinic in Palermo, the Sicilian capital, that Matteo Messina Denaro was arrested on Monday, January 16, said Pasquale Angelosanto, commander of Ros, the carabinieri unit responsible for the crime. organized and anti-terrorism.
In the photo of the fugitive published during his arrest, we see him decked out in a cap and sunglasses sitting in the minivan of the carabinieri. The clinic, where he had been treated for colon cancer for a year, had been secured by police to protect other patients. During his arrest with one of his bodyguards, he offered no resistance.
Treated for colon cancer
It is a clear success for the Italian anti-terrorism forces: Matteo Messina Denaro, born in April 1962 in Castelvetrano, near Trapani, Sicily, occupied the first place on the list of the six most wanted criminals in Italy . A former Cosa Nostra trigger, he had been sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for murder.
At 60, he is considered the successor of the great historical leaders of Cosa Nostra, Toto Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, who died in prison in 2016 and 2017. This criminal organization has been largely decimated by the incessant state operations carried out after the assassination in 1992 of judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
Nicknamed “Diabolik”
“With the people I killed myself, I could fill a cemetery”, would have boasted this firearms enthusiast, who committed his first homicide at 18 years old. Nicknamed “Diabolik”, named after a criminal character from a famous Italian comic strip of which he himself is a fan, he was the undisputed leader of Cosa Nostra in the province of Trapani, in western Sicily, even if his power extended far beyond this territory, towards Agrigento (to the south) and Palermo.
In 1992, he was part of a group of assassins sent to Rome to try to assassinate Judge Giovanni Falcone. They are finally recalled by Toto Riina, the boss of Corleone (nicknamed “the Beast” for his ferocity) who opts for another modus operandi.
During his long career, Matteo Messina Denaro has been ruthless. In July 1992, after having taken part in the murder of Vincenzo Milazzo, the chief of the rival clan of Alcamo, he strangles the companion of the latter, pregnant of three months. In 1996, he strangled with his hands the son of the repentant mafioso Mario Santo Di Matteo, the young Giuseppe, only 14 years old, whom he had held hostage for almost two years, before dissolving his body in acid.
The strategy of isolation
The Italian police had been tracking him since the 2000s, increasing the number of arrests and seizures of property in his entourage, in order to isolate him from his large support network. Last September, in an interview given to the news site Fanpage.it during a police operation that had led to the arrest of some of his supporters, the commander of Ros, Pasquale Angelosanto declared: “The objective is to weaken the structures and the network of aid and encouragement around Messina Denaro, restricting the operations of the fugitive, in the hope that sooner or later he will be captured. Difficulty getting around and managing everything is the only way to get to his arrest which I trust will happen as soon as possible. »