Palermo-Italy-January 16, 2023

30 years ago, Italian police were hunting

The No. 1 fugitive in Italy, convicted mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro and fugitive from justice for about 3 decades.

The Italian police announced today that Messina Denaro was arrested at a private clinic in Palermo, Sicily, where he was receiving treatment for an undisclosed medical condition, according to general Pascual angelosanto, who heads the Special Operations Squad of the police force.

Italian state television reported that Messina Denaro was taken by police to a secret location immediately after his arrest.

Even while on the run, Messina Denaro, who had a power base in western Sicily, was considered the leader of Cosa Nostra (Sicilian Mafia).

He was the last of 3 prominent Mafia bosses who have been on the run for decades and who have 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 jailed for two bombings in Sicily in 1992 that killed two top anti-Mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

Among other terrible crimes for which he was convicted was the murder of the young son of a renegade Mafia member, who strangled and decomposed his body in a container of acid.

The arrest came 30 years later, a day after the convicted "mafia boss" Salvatore "Toto" Reina, was arrested in an apartment in Palermo after 23 years on the run.