Cosa Nostra Mafia Boss Arrested While Receiving Colon Cancer Treatment

The considered boss of bosses of Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia (southern Italy), Matteo Messina Denaro, has been transferred to a secret location after his arrest this Monday at a health clinic in Palermo, the Sicilian capital, where he went to receive medical treatment for colon cancer.

The most wanted criminal in the country, on the run from justice for 30 years, regularly underwent medical examinations in the private clinic of La Maddalena, in Palermo, where dozens of police officers had stationed themselves to guarantee the safety of the rest of the patients during the arrest, according to the investigators, quoted by local media.

The Sicilian mafia boss suffered from colon cancer and liver metastases for which he underwent periodic cycles of chemotherapy treatments, for which he allegedly used the surname Bonafede, clinic sources said.

When he was arrested, Messina Denaro he was not bedridden, but undergoing medical examinations.

“Today, January 16, 2023, the carabinieri Special Operational Group of the territorial Command of the Sicily region, within the framework of the investigation coordinated by the Palermo prosecutor’s office, have arrested the fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro inside a health facility where he had attended for medical treatment”, announced General Pasquale Angelosanto.

Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloniconfirmed the arrest, which he described as “a great victory for the state” and which proves that “the State does not surrender to the mafia”.

Meloni, who highlighted that the arrest took place the day after the anniversary of the arrest 30 years ago of Totò Riina, another organized crime boss, thanked “the police forces and, in particular, the Carabineros, the National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor’s Office and the Palermo Prosecutor’s Office for the capture of the greatest exponent of mafia crime”.

The capture of the gangster, with several life sentences for the attacks on Cosa Nostra of 1993 and numerous homicides, comes after the intensification of the investigations carried out by the prosecutors of Palermo Maurizio de Lucia and the deputy Paolo Guido, add the media.

Messina Denarowho is 60 today, must serve several life sentences for the 1993 attacks in Florence, Rome and Milan in which ten people died.

He is also considered the mastermind behind the bombs that caused the death of the two anti-mafia magistrates in 1992, Paolo Borsellino and Giovani Falcone, his wife, Francesca Morvillo, and eight escort agents.

In a last sentence, the role of Messina Denaro in the so-called strategy of the Cosa Nostra attacks to put pressure on the State in the 1990s and proves its participation both in those of 1992, claimed by “Totó” Riina, and in the 1993 bombs, commissioned by another mafia boss, Bernardo Provenzano .

It was just after these attacks when Messina Denaro disappeared and, after the arrest of Riina and Provenzano, it was considered that he was still pulling the strings of Cosa Nostra from an unknown location.

Source: EFE