PALERMO, Italy: Bernardo Provenzano, the undisputed chief of the Sicilian
mafia who had been on the run for more than four decades, was arrested while
hiding in a farmhouse near Corleone in Sicily yesterday, officials said.
Sicilian mafia boss Bernardo
Provenzano is escorted to a police station in the southern city of Palermo
yesterday. He was arrested while hiding in a farmhouse near Corleone in
Sicily.[Reuters]
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"Thank
God. The hunt is finally over," said Palermo police chief Giuseppe Caruso after
agents nabbed Italy's most wanted man, scoring the state's biggest success
against the mafia in more than 13 years.
Provenzano, known as the "Phantom of Corleone" after his native hill town,
made famous by the Godfather films, has been running the mafia since former
"boss of bosses" Toto Riina was arrested in 1993.
He was arrested when police swooped on a farmhouse in the countryside near
Corleone. Provenzano, who put up no resistance and acknowledged his identity
after first denying it, was flown by helicopter to a secret location in Palermo.
President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi expressed his delight over the arrest to
Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu, a statement from the presidential palace
said.
The news bumped even national election results off the top spot on television
news bulletins.
Provenzano, 73, has been wanted since 1963 and was known as Italy's
"super-fugitive."
He had been sentenced in absentia to life in jail in connection with the
mafia's most notorious crimes of recent decades, including the killings in 1992
of top anti-mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
The last picture police had of him was taken when he was 25. They have since
been using computer depictions of how he might have aged, aided by information
from turncoat mafiosi.
Police said they had found cryptic notes on small pieces of paper known as
"pizzini" which Provenzano used to communicate with accomplices and his family.
In Corleone, the news of his capture was met by disbelief. "People were
shocked," said Dino Paternostro, an anti-mafia journalist. "His myth of
invincibility became part of our psyche. Most people believed he would never get
caught."