After three decades on the run, Italy’s most wanted mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro has been arrested, according to media reports. Police arrested the 60-year-old man today at a health center in the Sicilian capital Palermo, General Pasquale Angelosanto told Italian news agency AGI.
The mobster, who went underground in 1993, was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for murder, being considered the successor of the historic “godfathers” Bernardo Provenzano and Toto Riina, who died in prison in 2016 and 2017.
According to investigators, Messina Denaro had been admitted to a clinic in Palermo for a year because of a tumor in the abdomen. He had undergone surgery under the false name “André Bonafede” and was treated with chemotherapy.
“We had no idea we were treating Messina Denaro,” said a doctor at the clinic. When the chief noticed the police in the hospital, he tried to flee but was arrested and taken to a Carabinieri barracks in Sicily, investigators said.