Fugitive’s arrest like a ‘quake,’ but Mafia very resilient

By FRANCES D’EMILIO
Associated Press

ROME (AP) — Prosecutors are likening the arrest of a Mafia boss who was Italy’s No. 1 fugitive to an “earthquake” rocking the Sicily-based crime syndicate. Still, experts say Monday’s capture at a Palermo clinic of Matteo Messina Denaro after 30 years on the lam won’t eradicate the centuries-old crime organization. On Tuesday, police searched the convicted mobster’s last hideout in western Sicily and investigated a townsman for allegedly lending his identity to the fugitive. Anti-Mafia magistrates say Cosa Nostra has put behind it the strategy of bombings of three decades ago that triggered a fierce crackdown by the state. These days, the Mafia is focused on enormous earnings from drug trafficking, which “has made a comeback in a big way,” in the words of one prosecutor.