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The end of the line for Matteo Messina Denaro came in mundane fashion. On a Monday morning this month, the mafia boss was waiting in a queue for a Covid vaccine in Palermo when police closed in. A colonel from the carabinieri, Italy’s militarised police, asked him: “Are you Matteo Messina Denaro?”
“You know who I am,” came the reply.
The Guardian’s Lorenzo Tondo and Clare Longrigg tell Michael Safi that the capture of such a high-ranking mafia boss is significant but does not kill off the organisation, which has evolved into a different proposition for authorities than it once was. Police hope it will allow them to solve murders stretching back decades.
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The last confirmed sighting of Denaro before his arrest was in Tuscany in 1993, around the time explosives in a parked Fiat were detonated outside the Uffizi gallery, killing three people, injuring more than 40 and damaging priceless works of art.
Photograph: CARABINIERI/Reuters
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