He was one of the biggest names in Sicilian mafia Cosa Nostra: Who is Matteo Messina Denaro?

The four-word breaking news of Ansa agency on Monday, January 16 at 09:16, quickly spread to television, social media, and the streets: Matteo Messina Denaro was arrested!

Matteo Messina Denaro, the country's most wanted mob boss, has not been traced since 1993. Denaro, one of the last big bosses of the Sicilian mafia Cosa Nostra, is finally captured 30 years later, in his hometown of Sicily.

Surrounded by the La Maddalena clinic in Palermo, where he was treated for cancer under the name 'Andrea Bonafede', the mafia leader surrendered without resistance to the Carabinieri forces. In the operation in which more than 100 security guards participated, the notorious mafia boss and his assistant were arrested without a single shot being fired, without the need for handcuffs. Quickly removed from the island of Sicily, Denaro of Messina was taken to a maximum security prison.

Born into the mafia

Born in 1962 in the town of Castelvetrano, Trapani, Sicily, Matteo Messina Denaro was the son of a mafia clan boss, Francesco Messina Denaro. Born into the mafia, Denaro committed his first crime at the age of 18 and was sentenced to more than one life sentence in his absence. Nicknamed 'Diabolik' and 'U Siccu' (skinny), he prided himself on "killing enough people to fill a graveyard". His convictions included the bloodiest attacks in Italy's recent history.

Of all the murders Denaro had planned or ordered, one of the most brutal was the murder of Giuseppe Di Matteo, the son of a mafia confessor. Kidnapped at 12, Di Matteo was held hostage for 2 years, then strangled and destroyed by acid.

Messina Denaro had fingerprints in the bloody attacks in 1992-1993 when Cosa Nostra declared war on the state. Messina Denaro was among those convicted for the 1992 assassinations of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in Sicily, and for the bombings that killed 10 people in Rome, Milan, and Florence on the Italian mainland the following year.

New description unknown

Despite his name being the best-known fugitive, Matteo Messina Denaro's exterior has been a mystery until this week. The security forces applied a digital aging effect to the images taken when they were young, and conducted search studies with these robot pictures. However, it was claimed that Messina Denaro changed his face with plastic surgery during his life as a fugitive and even had his fingerprints removed. "We didn't even know what kind of face he had until this morning," the Palermo Prosecutor General said in a statement after the operation on Monday.

In 30 years, countless allegations have been made about Messina Denaro, whose name has been engraved in memories of his bloody crimes as well as his escape from being caught for years. Rumors of his flight to South America, and news of his sighting in Tunisia did not bring any results. Finally, in a raid on a restaurant in the Netherlands in 2021, a person was detained on suspicion of being Matteo Messina Denaro, but it soon became clear that this was a false alarm and that the detained person was a British tourist.

It turned out that Denaro lived, at least in the last period of his fugitive life, in Campobello di Mazara, 8-9 km from his birth town, Castelvetrano. Those who follow the mafia structures were not surprised at this news. The most convenient places for mob bosses to hide were often their homes and backyards. Because, on the one hand, the relations of influence and interest they had in their homeland ensured that they were protected and facilitated their hiding. On the other hand, it prevented them from losing control over the organization.

'End of the slaughter generation'

When Denaro's capture was announced, writer Roberto Saviano, known for his books on the Naples-based Camorra mafia, made a comment on social media: “The last ruler of Cosa Nostra's slaughter generation could not hide any longer. “U Siccu” Matteo Messina Denaro has been arrested! He was obviously on his own territory: like all bosses, he was exactly where everyone knew he was.”

Record 43 years on the run

Salvatore 'Toto' Riina, the "father of fathers" from the Corleone clan, was caught in 1993 after 23 years on the run and died in prison in 2017. Bernardo Provenzano, who assumed the leadership after Riina, also avoided capture for 43 years and died about 10 years after he was arrested in 2006.

Matteo Messina Denaro was seen as his heir because of his closeness to Riina. However, there is no consensus on whether Messina Denaro should take over as chief boss of Cosa Nostra. Experts emphasize that being from Trapani, not Palermo, does not allow this. Moreover, it is widely believed that Cosa Nostra has moved away from its old clear hierarchical structure and is no longer led by a single manager, but in a more dispersed structure.

But the point is that Denaro was the last fugitive boss of the mob terrorized by the bloody attacks of the 1990s, and is still an important reference point for Cosa Nostra. With his capture, the ringleaders of the massacre mafia era disappeared from the stage.