Police and investigators have found the hideout of Matteo Messina Denaro, the mafia boss arrested yesterday after 30 years on the run.
The ROS unit of the Carabinieri police and investigators from the Palermo Public Prosecutor’s Office have found the hideout used by Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro. The fugitive was arrested at a private clinic in the Sicilian capital on Monday after 30 years on the run.
Messina Denaro is now in a prison in the central city of L’Aquila, penitentiary police sources told ANSA. He is unlikely to ever return to his native Sicily.
The choice of L’Aquila prison was logical as it is a maximum-security facility equipped for the tough 41bis jail regime that mafia convicts are subjected to. Furthermore, there is a good oncology centre in the city’s hospital.
Hiding in plain sight
The hideout is in the town centre of Campobello di Mazara, in Messina Denaro’s home province of Trapani. It is the home town of Giovanni Luppino, the man who was arrested with Messina Denaro on Monday. Luppino is accused of helping him while he was a fugitive.
The home was searched inch-by-inch throughout the night. Palermo Deputy Chief Prosecutor Paolo Guido oversaw the operation. Guido has been investigating the former Cosa Nostra fugitive for years.
The 60-year-old mobster was arrested at a clinic where he had been undergoing treatment for cancer for over a year.
Messina Denaro had been condemned to life in prison in absentia for involvement dozens of murders. They include the 1992 bombings that killed anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the killing of Giuseppe Di Matteo, the 12-year-old son of a mobster-turned-State witness who was strangled and dissolved in acid in 1996, and bombings in Milan, Florence and Rome in 1993.
