They Got Him! The Most Wanted Mafia Boss In The World, Head Of "La Cosa Nostra" And Nicknamed "The Devil", Has Been Arrested By Italian Authorities In Sicily
BBC - Italy's most wanted mobster was heading to a cafe outside a private Sicilian clinic when a policeman approached him and asked him his name.
He did not lie.
He merely looked up and said: "You know who I am. I am Matteo Messina Denaro."
Until that moment, the armed forces could not be sure the man really was the Mafia "boss of all bosses", who they had been hunting for three decades.
He checked in for an appointment at the clinic under the name of Andrea Bonafede.
But after years of painstaking research, and only a computerised image to go on, Italy's Carabinieri military police were confident enough he was the man they were looking for.
During his time at the top of the Cosa Nostra organised crime syndicate, Messina Denaro oversaw racketeering, illegal waste dumping, money-laundering and drug-trafficking. He was convicted in absentia in 2002 of a string of murders.
He was reportedly the protege of Totò Riina, head of the Corleone clan, who was arrested in 1993 after 23 years on the run.
That was also the year that Messina Denaro vanished. For 30 years investigators could rely only on a facial composite and short snippets of voice recordings to identify him.
"It took so long to arrest him because, as it happened with other Mafia bosses, he was protected by a very dense network of complicities, deeply-rooted and extremely powerful in Sicily and beyond," Italian journalist Andrea Purgatori told the BBC.
Nadu blogged this yesterday but he kind of mailed it in. Or maybe he was upset because the bad guy lost. I don't know.
But this is a huge fucking deal.
This is El Chapo level huge. Maybe bigger to be honest. Not to us in America, because El Chapo's criminal enterprise directly affected us a lot more being that we're situated right next to and border Mexcio. But for Europe and southern Italy, this is massive.
Matteo Denaro is what our former president would call a "bad hombre". And what our current president would call a "bad bunny".
He not only ran "La Cosa Nostra", the crime family The Godfather is literally based on, out of Sicily for decades. But he also terrorized the country of Italy and held a stranglehold on its citizens for just as long. His father Francesco, Don Ciccio, was the mafia boss of Castelvetrano and had a close alliance with the Corleones of Toto Riina.
This piece of shit was found directly responsible for a ton of really awful, vile shit. Here's just some of his highlight reel:
- He was responsible for the 1992 killing of anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, where his organization set off bombs, killing the magistrates and many other innocent victims.
- He was responsible for the deadly 1993 bombing attacks in Milan, Florence, and Rome which killed dozens
- He was responsible for the kidnapping, torture, and killing of the 11-year-old son of a mafioso-turned-state witness. Something he was very proud of and boasted of. The boy was held in captivity, and tortured, for two years before being killed; his body was dissolved in acid to prevent the family from burying him
- Denaro reportedly murdered a hotel manager who was going after the same woman as him.
- He did all of this while regularly bragging to his associates about collecting unemployment from the Italian state for his entire life.
This guy is a true piece of shit human. There's a reason he is nicknamed "il diavolo", aka "the devil".
He once boasted he could "fill a cemetery" with his victims.
BBC- Clans nicknamed Messina Denaro "Diabolik" - the name of an uncatchable thief in a comic book series - and "U Siccu" (Skinny).
He is thought to be Cosa Nostra's last "secret-keeper". Many informers and prosecutors believe that he holds all the information and the names of those involved in several of the most high-profile crimes by the Mafia, including the bomb attacks that killed magistrates Falcone and Borsellino.
You can see why the locals were so happy when news of his arrest spread yesterday. They took to the streets to applaud the Carabinieri.
For years, Messina Denaro had been a symbol of the state's inability to reach the upper echelons of the organised crime syndicates.
His arrest will be an unexpected sign of hope that the Mafia can be eradicated even in the southern regions of the country, where the state is perceived as largely absent and ineffective.
University of Essex criminology professor Anna Sergi told the BBC that Messina Denaro's arrest was "symbolic not just because he was the boss of Cosa Nostra, but because he represents the last fugitive the Italian state really wanted to get its hands on."
She said the reason people applauded in Palermo and the state felt "triumphant" was because the news felt like closure.
He was said to have received so many plastic surgery procedures to change his appearance, authorities had no idea what he would look like so it was even harder for them to identify him.
The sad thing is that the mafia is so ingrained in southern Italy's government, commerce, and culture altogether, it's what allowed Denaro to operate in the shadows, and elude authorities for 30 years.
(Sidebar - if you want to know just how bad it really is, check out my blog from a couple of years ago on the 'Ndrengheta mob in Calabria. This trial is still underway FYI.)
He was protected in much the same way Whitey Bulger was here in America. He had rats on the inside who tipped him off to everything, he had hundreds, if not thousands on his payroll. That means they're still embedded, and it more than likely means he was given up by his underbosses, or his informants, because he's on his way out due to his age and state of health.
"Over the years, a sort of smokescreen formed around Messina Denaro, made up of a network of people loyal to him," said Mitja Gialuz, lawyer and professor of criminal procedure at LUISS University in Rome.
For over a decade, police cracked down on anyone suspected of protecting or aiding Messina Denaro. More than 100 people were arrested, including Denaro's siblings, and businesses worth over €150m (£130m) were seized.
So it's somewhat of a pyrrhic victory for the authorities having finally caught him. In true whack-a-mole fashion, there's somebody who's been waiting in the wings to take over the don role for a while now and keep the machine humming. In a region where unemployment is 40%, and the mafia offers stable, regular income, you can see why it's such an epidemic for southern Italy.
Gian Carlo Caselli, a judge and former prosecutor general, said that the arrest of Messina Denaro was an "exceptional… simply historical event" that might lead to significant developments in the ongoing inquiries into the 1993 bomb attacks that killed 10 people across Italy.
Italy's president, Sergio Mattarella, whose brother Piersanti was killed by Cosa Nostra in 1980, congratulated the minister of the interior and the carabinieri military police.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni travelled to Sicily today and visited the memorial to Giuseppe Falcone and the other victims of the 1992 bombing near Palermo, where she observed a minute's silence.
Ms Meloni also thanked the armed forces for their work in detaining the "most important member of the mafia criminal group", adding: "This is a great victory for the state."
Much like Bin Laden, and Bulger, Denaro had been living in an unassuming house, blending in with locals who recognized him, but never alerted authorities- either out of fear, or respect. Or both.
Details of how Messina Denaro lived before his arrest are now starting to emerge. He was living in an unassuming house in Campobello di Mazara, 116km from Palermo and a mere 8km from his birthplace of Castelvetrano.
A neighbour told Italian TV that he frequently saw the man and that they would greet one another regularly.
Police found no weapons in the hideout, according to initial reports, but rather luxury perfumes, expensive furniture and designer clothes.
His associates' internet searches may have contributed to Messina Denaro's arrest, but it is unlikely the boss himself ever used technology because of the risk of leaving digital traces.
"A Mafia boss, in order to continue to operate undisturbed, has to stay away from technology, and return to an almost primitive way of life, going back to the roots of verbal communication, and creating a parallel and sophisticated secret code of communication with his allies," Prof Gialuz explained.
I've never understood the obsession or way people in America glorify the mafia, but condemn all other forms of organized crime. They're really no different than the Mexican drug cartels, the bloods and crips, or fucking al Qaeda to be honest. They prey on the weak. They use fear and intimidation to extort and manipulate. They peddle drugs into communities which ruin millions of lives. They recruit young, impressionable, and vulnerable young men into their ranks, and kill with zero regard. This fallacy that "they only kill each other" is bullshit. They're scum.
This was another huge win, milestone moment for Italy. And the good guys. Let's hope this streak continues.
p.s. - if you haven't watched "Gomorrah" yet, and need a new show, start it up. You won't be disappointed. It's a raw and honest depiction of organized crime in southern Italy. (HBO Max has the entire series, I recommend watching it in Italian with English subtitles on. The voice dubbing in English is bad.)
p.p.s. - check out Nadu's podcast "The Sitdown" on iTunes. Hopefully he has me back on soon to discuss this story.