According to an official statement, Meloni met with the district prosecutor, Maurizio de Lucia, who led the investigations that led to the arrest of Messina on Monday, as well as with the police officers who participated in the operation.

“My warmest thanks, along with that of the entire Government, to the police forces and, in particular, to the carabinieri, the National Prosecutor’s Office and the Palermo Prosecutor’s Office, for the capture of the most significant exponent of the mafia,” he told the Head of Government, who added that “the fight against mafia crime will continue without truce.”

For his part, the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, expressed in a message to the police and judicial authorities of Palermo “great satisfaction for a historic result”, and emphasized that this is “an extraordinary day for the State and for all those who have always fought against the mafias”.

This morning, Italian policemen captured Messina, after a large operation carried out at the La Maddalena clinic, in the aforementioned city, where the mafia boss under a false identity received periodic chemotherapy treatments, after a cancer operation, which he underwent there a year ago, said a spokesman for the prosecution.

Nicknamed “Diabolik”, he was sentenced in absentia in 1993 to life imprisonment, as guilty of more than 50 homicides, including those of children and pregnant women, as well as for mafia association, attacks, robberies and possession of explosives, among other crimes, but despite being the most wanted criminal, his capture took three decades.

Messina was, together with Bernardo Provenzando and Totó Riici, killed in 2016 and 2017, respectively, one of the three bosses of Cosa Nostra in one of its bloodiest times, when that organization assassinated the carabinieri general Carlos Alberto dalla Chiesa, in 1982, as well as judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino 10 years later, the source specified.

ef/mgt/ort