Italy (Brussels Morning) A record-breaking fugitive, similar to his loyal allies Totò Riina and Bernardo Provenzano. What happened yesterday, where was he hiding, what led to his arrest, and why do his handcuffs weigh so much?
The last month’s arrest was undoubtedly characterized by the local news as an event with global implications: the capture of the Cosa Nostra mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, on the run for thirty years and sought everywhere by the Police and Carabinieri since the summer of 1993. During December, the ROS (Special Operations Unit of the Carabinieri) and the prosecutor’s office in Palermo located his hideout (in Campobello di Mazara, in the Trapani region, the hometown of the accomplice Giovanni Luppino, who was also arrested with the mafia boss), and then arrested him at the Maddalena clinic in the capital of Sicily, where he was registered under the name Andrea Bonafede (a relative of an old accomplice of the boss). Now, the super fugitive could appear for the first time in a courtroom on Thursday, January 19, in the bunker courtroom of the court of Caltanissetta, where he is accused as the mastermind behind the bombings in via D’Amelio and Capaci. Until now, he had been judged in absentia, and the entire trial had taken place in his absence.
Messina Denaro, immediately transferred to a secret location, will be assigned to a maximum-security prison, an institution that allows him to receive medical treatment, such as in Parma, where Riina and Provenzano were previously imprisoned. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaks of a “hard prison” regime, and prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia states that the boss’s conditions “are compatible with prison.” The most likely hypothesis in recent hours is that the boss will be detained in the prison of L’Aquila, as it is a maximum-security facility that has already housed prominent figures, and also because there is a good oncology center in the hospital of the capital.
The investigation that led to the capture of the mafia boss from Castelvetrano, in Trapani, was coordinated by the prosecutor of Palermo, Maurizio de Lucia, and the deputy prosecutor, Paolo Guido. It was a traditional investigation: no informants, no anonymous tips. Messina Denaro was apprehended through the same strategy that led to the arrest of the boss Bernardo Provenzano: draining the water around the fugitive by dismantling the network of supporters. Some of these supporters were prominent figures: “A slice of the bourgeoisie helped him,” says Prosecutor de Lucia. That’s what happened. And the boss’s family, squeezed by the investigators, eventually made a fatal mistake. Andrea Bonafede had undergone liver surgery at the Maddalena clinic a year ago. But on the day he was supposed to be undergoing surgery, the magistrates discovered, Bonafede was at his home in Campobello di Mazara. The suspicion that the fugitive was using someone else’s identity became strong. The booking of a chemotherapy session under the name Bonafede triggered the blitz.
But the investigations did not stop with the arrest. Searches have been ongoing for hours in the Trapani area: Castelvetrano and Campobello di Mazara are being meticulously searched. Investigators have found the hideout of the boss in Vicolo San Vito (formerly Via Cv31), right in the center of Campobello di Mazara: it is where he is believed to have hidden in recent years. The house was searched last night. It is not yet known what was found inside the hideout used by the boss during the last period of his fugitive life. Campobello, with a population of 11 thousand inhabitants in the province of Trapani, is only 8 kilometers from Castelvetrano, the hometown of Messina Denaro and his family.
The identification of the hideout and its search are crucial steps in reconstructing the boss’s fugitive life. Several informants have revealed that the Trapani godfather was the guardian of Totò Riina’s treasure, top-secret documents that the Corleone boss kept in his hiding place before his arrest, documents that disappeared because, unlike now, the house was not searched. At 8:30, the men from the Scientific Investigations Department of the Trapani boss arrived at the hideout, thoroughly searching the residence. Also present at the scene is Captain Domenico Testa of the Carabinieri company in Mazara del Vallo. Messina Denaro lived in a house that, in recent months, remained uninhabited after the owners moved.
My name is Matteo Messina Denaro,” he had said arrogantly to the Carabiniere of the ROS (Special Operations Unit of the Carabinieri) who was about to arrest him. The godfather of Castelvetrano was arrested at 8:20, just as he was about to begin a chemotherapy session at the Maddalena clinic in Palermo, one of the city’s most well-known clinics. When he realized he was being pursued, he made a move to distance himself, but it cannot be considered a real escape, as dozens of masked and armed ROS officers had surrounded the clinic. Patients, kept outside the facility for hours, only realized what was happening later and applauded the military, thanking them. The same scene unfolded outside the Dalla Chiesa barracks, the headquarters of the Legion, where in the afternoon, Prosecutor De Lucia, Deputy Prosecutor Paolo Guido, ROS General Pasquale Angelosanto, and the Palermo commander of the Special Group Lucio Arcidiacono held a press conference. A small crowd awaited the prosecutors and displayed a banner that read: “Capaci does not forget.”
“At the moment, we do not have evidence to speak of complicity on the part of the clinic staff, also because the documents presented by the fugitive seemed to be in order, but the investigations are now underway,” said Prosecutor Maurizio De Lucia. The identity card of Andrea Bonafede is said to have been forged by Matteo Messina Denaro, placing his photo in place of Mr. Bonafede’s.
He appeared to be in good health and good condition; it does not seem that his conditions are incompatible with prison – explained Deputy Prosecutor Paolo Guido of Palermo at the press conference – He looked good, well-dressed, wearing luxury clothing, which leads us to say that his economic conditions were good. Obviously, he will be treated like every citizen has the right to be treated. At the time of the capture, he was also wearing a very particular watch worth 30-35 thousand euros.
Traces of the super fugitive boss dating back to January 1994 placed him in Spain, in Barcelona, where he would have undergone retinal surgery at a well-known ophthalmic clinic. But not only that: according to investigative findings from some years ago, he would have suffered from chronic kidney failure, for which he would have needed dialysis. To avoid the risk of arrest during travels for treatment and clinical procedures, the boss would have installed dialysis equipment in his hideout. A significant confirmation of the health conditions of the super fugitive came last November from the informant Salvatore Baiardo, who managed the hiding of the Graviano brothers in Milan in the early ’90s. In a television interview on La7 with Massimo Giletti, the informant revealed that Matteo Messina Denaro was seriously ill, and that’s why he was contemplating surrendering.
Matteo Messina Denaro is the son of the old Mafia boss Ciccio from Castelvetrano, a historical ally of the Corleonesi led by Totò Riina. In 1993, after the Mafia massacres in Rome, Milan, and Florence, he wrote a letter to his then-girlfriend, Angela, announcing the beginning of his life as a “Primula Rossa” (Red Primrose). “You will hear about me,” he wrote, suggesting that soon his name would be associated with serious bloodshed. “They will portray me as a devil, but it’s all lies.” The Trapani boss has been sentenced to life imprisonment for dozens of murders, including that of the young Giuseppe Di Matteo, the son of a turncoat, who was strangled and dissolved in acid after almost two years of captivity. The family commented on the arrest, saying, “Now he will have to answer to human justice, as well as divine justice,” for the 1992 massacres that claimed the lives of Judges Falcone and Borsellino and for the 1993 bombings in Milan, Florence, and Rome. Messina Denaro was the last Mafia boss of “primary importance” still at large. Over the years, hundreds of law enforcement officers have been involved in the efforts to capture him. His evasion was a record, similar to his loyal allies Totò Riina, who evaded arrest for 23 years, and Bernardo Provenzano, who managed to avoid prison for 38 years.
Giovanni Luppino, the accomplice of Matteo Menna Denaro, is an olive merchant and a professional farmer with no criminal record. He was the one who drove him to the private clinic in Palermo for medical treatment. Luppino, from Campobello di Mazara, a town near Castelvetrano, had been managing, along with his sons, a center for the processing of Nocellara del Belìce olives on the outskirts of Campobello di Mazara. His role was to act as an intermediary between producers and large buyers from the Campania region.
An interesting note: the former footballer Totò Schillaci, the top scorer at the 1990 World Cup with the Italian national team, was an unwitting witness to the arrest. Schillaci happened to be in the hospital waiting to enter: “I was in the bar area, I hadn’t even entered yet because I was smoking a cigarette when I saw everyone suddenly coming in hoodies, masked with ski masks, and they stopped us. I couldn’t see much because they told us to stay where we were. It looked like a madhouse, like a scene from the Wild West for what was happening.”
From Messina to Matteo Messina Denaro: it is an epic journey for Palermo prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia. “We have captured the last instigator responsible for the massacres of 1992-93,” De Lucia said in a press conference after the arrest. “We are particularly proud of the work completed this morning, concluding a long and extremely delicate operation. It is a debt that the Republic owed to the victims of the Mafia, and we have partially repaid it. Capturing a dangerous fugitive without resorting to violence and without handcuffs is an important sign for a democratic country.” The capture of Matteo Messina Denaro is a historic milestone, both for the prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia and for Italy. De Lucia, 61, who took office in Palermo in October 2022 but was previously in Messina, has a long experience in Mafia investigations, having been a prosecutor in Palermo for a long time, then in the national anti-Mafia directorate, and in recent years, he led the Messina Prosecutor’s Office.
