Italian Labored Mafia For 30 Years Arrested In Hospitals During Cancer Treatment

JAKARTA - Mutual applause in the Palermo area, Italy. Matteo Messina Denaro, the most wanted mafia kingpin in the country, was finally arrested after being searched for 30 years.

Monday January 16, Italian police arrested Matteo Messina Denaro, who has been on the run since 1993 at a private hospital in the capital of Sicily, Palermo. There, the boss of the Cosa Nostra mafia in Sicily is undergoing cancer treatment.

The 60-year-old was sentenced to life in prison in a absentia court for involvement in the 1992 murder of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

Police said they detained Matteo Messina Denaro at La Maddalena Palermo hospital. And this success made local residents applaud and shake hands with police in the Balaclava as a▁peringatan which is believed to contain the suspect was taken away.

Quella che cade su Palermo non è pioggia, sono lacrime di gioia.#MatteoMessinaDenaro pic.twitter.com/E4yMqhZEFN

— Attendere, Prego (@Ricalcolo1) January 16, 2023

The arrest operation was also planned in detail. Reportedly, as quoted from Channel News Asia, the police secretly transferred medical personnel to the building overnight to protect other patients.

Messina Denaro also faces a life sentence for her role in the bomb attacks in Florence, Rome, and Milan that killed 10 people the following year.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni praised the arrest as "a big win for a country that has never given up in front of the mafia".

Trent'anni di attesa, gli abbracci e i "grazie" ai carabineri del Ros #MatteoMessinaDenaro pic.twitter.com/5V5HCjqnGr

— Andrea Tundo (@andtundo) January 16, 2023

Police said in September 2022 that Messina Denaro could still issue orders related to the way the mafia was carried out in the area around the city of Trapani in western Sicily, its regional headquarters, even though it had been missing for a long time.

Messina Denaro, who is from the small town of Castelvetrano near Trapani, was accused by prosecutors of being responsible for a number of other murders in the 1990s.

In 1993, he helped organize the kidnapping of a 12-year-old boy, Giuseppe Di Matteo, in a bid to prevent his father from providing evidence against the mafia, prosecutors said. The boy was detained two years before he was strangled and his body dissolved in acid.