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Italy’s most wanted mafia boss arrested after three decades on the run

Italy’s Carabinieri police on Monday arrested Matteo Messina Denaro, the country’s most wanted mafia boss who had been at large for three decades.

Messina Denaro, who was detained in the Sicilian capital Palermo, is alleged to be a boss of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra mafia.

He has been sentenced in absentia to a life term for his role in the 1992 murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

He also faces a life sentence for his role in bomb attacks in Florence, Rome and Milan which killed 10 people the following year.

“I filled a cemetery, all by myself”, the 60 year old once infamously claimed.

In August 2021, the Italian public TV broadcaster Rai released a recording from March 1993 in which the voice of Denaro was identified for the first time during a trial in which he was called to testify. After a few weeks, the boss fled and has been on the run ever since.

Police said in September 2022 that he was still able to issue commands relating to the way the mafia was run in the area around the western Sicilian city of Trapani, his regional stronghold, despite his long disappearance.

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