Some Italian mafiosos are taking the tangent to the tropics, but most big fish stay in the country, continuing to rule in the shadows, even if it means living secluded within the walls of their chosen prison.
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The squadrons of hunters, special rifle squads, relentlessly track down organized crime bigwigs hiding in Sicily, in the Sardinian maquis or in the mountains of Calabria.
There, in the heart of the town or village where they were born, where they swung their first weapons, where they first shed their blood, they are at the mercy of betrayal but under the protection of their companions.
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“Going to jail is a failure for a mafioso. The mafioso wants to die in his bed, not in a cell,” specialist journalist Attilio Bolzoni told the AFP news agency.
Like the godfathers of the Sicilian Mafia Cosa Nostra Toto Riina and Bernardo Provenzano before him, Matteo Messina Denaro, who was arrested on Monday after 30 years on the run, has holed up on his island, a stone’s throw from his hometown of Castelvetrano.
The last living great Sicilian “Capo” lived in a comfortable apartment and, according to the residents of Campobello di Mazara, went out in broad daylight to have a coffee in the local bar, order a pizza, do his shopping… He was armed with false papers and posed as a doctor.
Others wear wigs, dress as women, have cosmetic surgery.
Cosa Nostra is only a shadow of itself, beheaded by the state after the assassination of judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, for which Messina Denaro was sentenced to life imprisonment.
But for what remains, a godfather like him cannot command from afar save to risk having his power challenged. He must stay among his men at all costs.
Mafiosos fleeing Italy often hide in so-called “bunkers”: these are converted cellars with a bedroom, toilet and kitchen in the basement of individual houses or small buildings. Access is through hatches hidden under furniture, carpets, false floors and behind a mirror.
Their hosts are friends, companions or family members with whom they regularly deliver, play cards or celebrate Christmas under the nose and beard of the authorities.
According to Il Corriere della Sera newspaper, investigators found condoms and boxes of Viagra in Messina Denaro’s hideout.
Others don’t have that privilege and are doomed to seek refuge deep in the forests of southern Italy.
In 2016, two leaders of the ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia, were flushed into a miserable “bunker” nestled in the mountain, between trees, where they “lived like animals”, as prosecutors put it at the time, eating canned food, in precarious hygienic conditions.
Toto Riina, the boss of Corleone, also called “the beast” because of his wildness, lived in a “villa bunker” in the center of Palermo until his arrest in 1993. It now houses… a carabinieri barracks.
“A man who is among the most wanted in the world needs protection and money,” analyzes Anna Sergi, a criminologist, of Matteo Messina Denaro, whose legacy – unknown by definition – has been estimated at hundreds of millions of euros, according to the Italian press.
In addition to their family and cronies, mafiosi have long benefited from high-level support from the state and political parties, from complicity in the police, judiciary, business or church.
This is still the case, at least locally. “They have connections everywhere. We inform them about police operations, but above all they are drawn to an area where we help them hide,” writer Roberto Saviano told AFP.
“They can rely on a network of people who take the risk of protecting them, either because they are being paid generously or because they are being subjected to some form of blackmail,” explains Anna Sergi.