Friday, March 29, 2024 | Ramadan 18, 1445 H
clear sky
weather
OMAN
25°C / 25°C
EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Investigators find hideout of mafia boss following arrest

Carabinieri police stand guard near the hideout of Matteo Messina Denaro, Italy's most wanted mafia boss, after he was arrested, in the Sicilian town of Campobello di Mazara. - Reuters
Carabinieri police stand guard near the hideout of Matteo Messina Denaro, Italy's most wanted mafia boss, after he was arrested, in the Sicilian town of Campobello di Mazara. - Reuters
minus
plus

ROME: Investigators have found the last hiding place of mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, following his arrest in hospital, the authorities said on Tuesday.


The most wanted criminal in Italy for years was last seen in a house in the small town of Campobello di Mazara, not far from his Sicilian birthplace Castelvetrano.


Carabinieri police officers and special forces searched the 60-year-old's flat on Monday night. According to Italian media reports, the investigators seized luxury items such as expensive clothes and watches. No weapons were found in the two-storey building.


The security forces want to use the searches to gain further insights into the organisation of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra. Above all, they hope that Messina Denaro kept the so-called archive of Salvatore "Totò" Riina in the inconspicuous house in a residential area.


The Mafia godfather was arrested in Palermo in 1993, but henchmen - including Messina Denaro, according to investigators and key witnesses - were able to remove documents and records from his flat before the police arrived.


Whether the archive or parts of it are in the building was not yet known at noon on Tuesday. Searches and police analysis were stillon going, and the street was cordoned off.


Messina Denaro, who had evaded capture by spending 30 years in hiding, was arrested in a private clinic in Palermo on Monday. He had been receiving treatment for cancer there on and off for about a year.


He was then flown out of Sicily by military plane and taken to a high-security prison in the town of L'Aquila in Abruzzo, the ANSA news agency reported. The prison, about an hour and a half's drive from Rome, specialises in the detention and isolation of serious mafia criminals.


Italians have been outraged that the police had been unable to catch the Cosa Nostra boss for so long, when he apparently had not left his home region for three decades. - dpa


SHARE ARTICLE
arrow up
home icon