Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, Italy’s most wanted person, was arrested on Monday after 30 years on the run.
A ruthless operator who once reportedly boasted he could “fill a cemetery” with his victims, the 60-year-old was a leading figure in Cosa Nostra, the real-life Sicilian crime syndicate depicted in the Godfather movies.
He was arrested at a clinic in Sicily where he was receiving treatment for an undisclosed medical condition, although reports suggest he had been having periodic treatment for colon cancer under a false name.
His first words to police were “I'm Matteo Messina Denaro”, the ANSA news agency reported. He did not resist arrest.
Denaro comes from the small town of Castelvetrano near Trapani in western Sicily, and is the son of a mafia boss.
Police said last September that he was still able to issue commands relating to the way the mafia was run in the area around Trapani, his regional stronghold.
Before he went into hiding, he was known for driving expensive cars and his taste for wearing finely tailored suits and Rolex watches.
The last of three longtime fugitive top-level Mafia bosses, who had for decades eluded capture, he went into hiding as a young man.
Hundreds of police officers have been tasked with tracking him down over the years.
The Cosa Nostra top boss was tried and convicted in absentia of dozens of murders and faces multiple life sentences.
Crimes
His crimes include two bombings in Sicily in 1992 that killed top anti-Mafia prosecutors, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, Falcone’s wife and several of their bodyguards.
He faces another life sentence for his role in bomb attacks in Florence, Rome and Milan that killed 10 people in 1993.
And he is accused by prosecutors of being solely or jointly responsible for numerous other murders in the 1990s.
In 1993 Denaro helped organise the kidnapping of a 12-year-old boy, Giuseppe Di Matteo, in an attempt to dissuade his father from giving evidence against the mafia, prosecutors say. The boy was held in captivity for two years before he was strangled and his body dissolved in acid.
He also strangled a woman while she was pregnant, according to Italian media.
Denaro, who had a power base in the port city of Trapani, in western Sicily, was considered Sicily’s Cosa Nostra top boss even while a fugitive.
During his years on the run, he had a series of lovers and passed time by playing video games, according to Italian media reports.
In 2015, police discovered he was communicating with his closest collaborators via the pizzini system, where tiny, folded paper notes were left under a rock at a farm in Sicily.
Investigators spent decades searching the homes and businesses of the boss's known allies on the island.
They looked in particular for hiding places in grottoes, caverns or even bunkers inside buildings where the man nicknamed “Diabolik” could be concealed.
Our legal columnist
Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
GAC GS8 Specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4cyl turbo
Power: 248hp at 5,200rpm
Torque: 400Nm at 1,750-4,000rpm
Transmission: 8-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 9.1L/100km
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh149,900
Usain Bolt's World Championships record
2007 Osaka
200m Silver
4x100m relay Silver
2009 Berlin
100m Gold
200m Gold
4x100m relay Gold
2011 Daegu
100m Disqualified in final for false start
200m Gold
4x100m relay Gold
2013 Moscow
100m Gold
200m Gold
4x100m relay Gold
2015 Beijing
100m Gold
200m Gold
4x100m relay Gold
How green is the expo nursery?
Some 400,000 shrubs and 13,000 trees in the on-site nursery
An additional 450,000 shrubs and 4,000 trees to be delivered in the months leading up to the expo
Ghaf, date palm, acacia arabica, acacia tortilis, vitex or sage, techoma and the salvadora are just some heat tolerant native plants in the nursery
Approximately 340 species of shrubs and trees selected for diverse landscape
The nursery team works exclusively with organic fertilisers and pesticides
All shrubs and trees supplied by Dubai Municipality
Most sourced from farms, nurseries across the country
Plants and trees are re-potted when they arrive at nursery to give them room to grow
Some mature trees are in open areas or planted within the expo site
Green waste is recycled as compost
Treated sewage effluent supplied by Dubai Municipality is used to meet the majority of the nursery’s irrigation needs
Construction workforce peaked at 40,000 workers
About 65,000 people have signed up to volunteer
Main themes of expo is ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future’ and three subthemes of opportunity, mobility and sustainability.
Expo 2020 Dubai to open in October 2020 and run for six months
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KEY DEVELOPMENTS IN MARITIME DISPUTE
2000: Israel withdraws from Lebanon after nearly 30 years without an officially demarcated border. The UN establishes the Blue Line to act as the frontier.
2007: Lebanon and Cyprus define their respective exclusive economic zones to facilitate oil and gas exploration. Israel uses this to define its EEZ with Cyprus
2011: Lebanon disputes Israeli-proposed line and submits documents to UN showing different EEZ. Cyprus offers to mediate without much progress.
2018: Lebanon signs first offshore oil and gas licencing deal with consortium of France’s Total, Italy’s Eni and Russia’s Novatek.
2018-2019: US seeks to mediate between Israel and Lebanon to prevent clashes over oil and gas resources.
SPECS
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Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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United States
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China
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3.
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UAE
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Japan
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5
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Norway
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Canada
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Singapore
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Australia
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Saudi Arabia
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South Korea
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The biog
Age: 19
Profession: medical student at UAE university
Favourite book: The Ocean at The End of The Lane by Neil Gaiman
Role model: Parents, followed by Fazza (Shiekh Hamdan bin Mohammed)
Favourite poet: Edger Allen Poe
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Notable cricketers and political careers
- India: Kirti Azad, Navjot Sidhu and Gautam Gambhir (rumoured)
- Pakistan: Imran Khan and Shahid Afridi (rumoured)
- Sri Lanka: Arjuna Ranatunga, Sanath Jayasuriya, Tillakaratne Dilshan (rumoured)
- Bangladesh (Mashrafe Mortaza)
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
The view from The National
The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
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