The "boss of bosses" of the global empire of organised crime, Matteo Messina Denaro, was apprehended in Italy on Monday after three decades on the lam, according to the police.
According to Pasquale Angelosanto, commander of the Carabinieri police's Special Operations Group, the 60-year-old Denaro was apprehended without incident at a medical facility in Palermo, Sicily, where he had gone for therapeutic therapy.
According to him, an investigation directed by the Palermo prosecutor's office led to the operation to apprehend Italy's most sought man.
Denaro has been receiving treatment for a tumour at the La Maddelina private clinic for at least a year, according to sources who spoke to the Corriere della Serra daily.
As the mafia boss was brought away in handcuffs and transported to the San Lorenzo Carabinieri barracks in Palermo, other patients at the facility cheered, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.
Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister of Italy, hailed the arrest as a "major triumph for the State" and noted that it occurred just one day after the 30th anniversary of what is arguably the most well-known mafia boss arrest in Italian history: the capture of Salvatore "Toto" Riina in 1993.
"My warmest thanks and those of the entire government go to the police forces, in particular to the Carabinieri [special operations] section, the National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor's Office, and the Palermo Prosecutor's Office, for the capture of the most significant figure in the mafia," she said in a Twitter thread.
"The government will make sure that the fight against mafia crime continues without respite, as demonstrated by the fact that this executive's first measure -- the defense of the 'carcere ostativo' (a law imposing long sentences for mafia criminals) -- concerned precisely this matter," she added.
After receiving a life sentence for his role in the terrorist attack on the Via D'Amelio on July 19, 1992, which killed anti-mafia Italian magistrate Paolo Borsellino and five members of his police escort, Denaro went into hiding in 1993.
He was also found guilty in relation to a bombing that took place in Capaci, Sicily, on May 23, 1992, and resulted in the deaths of anti-Mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone, his wife Francesca Morvillo, and three police escort agents.
Police think Denaro became the "boss of bosses" in the crime family following the killings of Bernardo "The Tractor" Provenzano in 2016 and Riina in 2017. He was given the nickname "Diabolik" after an Italian comic book character.
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