Italy's most-wanted man, Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, was arrested Monday after three decades on the run.
He was apprehended in the Sicilian capital, Palermo, Italy's Carabinieri police division said.
Messina Denaro, a convicted murderer who has eluded authorities 30 years, is thought to be the leader of the notorious Cosa Nostra organized crime group.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in a statement that the arrest was “a great victory for the state that shows it never gives up in the face of the Mafia.”
Gen. Pasquale Angelosanto, who leads the Carabinieri’s special operations squad, said Messina Denaro was arrested at a private clinic in Palermo where he was being treated for an unspecified medical issue. [snip]
Police warned in September last year that despite his low profile, Messina Denaro could still issue commands to organized crime groups around the western Sicilian city of Trapani.
He was sentenced to life in prison — at a trial he did not attend — for his part in the murders of anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992.
He faces a further life sentence for involvement in bomb attacks in Rome, Florence and and Milan in 1993.
The arrest marks the latest in a string of high-profile captures of Mafia bosses.
Newly empowered House Republicans on Sunday demanded the White House turn over all information related to its searches that have uncovered classified documents at President Joe Biden’s home and former office in the wake of more records found at his Delaware residence.
“We have a lot of questions,” said Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.
Comer, R-Ky., said he wants to see all documents and communications related to the searches by the Biden team, as well as visitor logs of the president’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, from Jan. 20, 2021, to present. He said the aim is to determine who might have had access to classified material and how the records got there.
The White House on Saturday said it had discovered five additional pages of classified documents at Biden’s home on Thursday, the same day a special counsel was appointed to review the matter.
In a letter Sunday to White House chief of staff Ron Klain, Comer criticized the searches by Biden representatives when the Justice Department was beginning to investigate and said Biden’s “mishandling of classified materials raises the issue of whether he has jeopardized our national security.” Comer demanded that the White House provide all relevant information including visitor logs by the end of the month.
Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Comer referred to Biden’s home as a “crime scene” though he acknowledged that it was not clear whether laws were broken.
While the circumstances of the Biden and Malignant Loser classified documents cases are significantly different in almost every respect, the average person only hears "they both had classified documents they shouldn't have had." It's a grievous unforced error. To avoid giving Republicans their ultimate wet dream, let's hope the documents in Biden's possession don't turn out to involve his son Hunter.
The death toll from a weekend Russian missile strike on an apartment building in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro has risen to 40, authorities said Monday, as Western analysts pointed to indications the Kremlin was preparing for a drawn-out war in Ukraine after almost 11 months of fighting.
About 1,700 people lived in the multi-story building, and search and rescue crews have worked nonstop since Saturday’s strike to locate victims and survivors in the wreckage. The regional administration said 39 people have been rescued so far and 30 more remained missing. Authorities said at least 75 were wounded.
The reported death toll made it the deadliest single attack on Ukrainian civilians since before the summer, according to The Associated Press-Frontline War Crimes Watch project. Residents said the apartment tower did not house any military facilities.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, called the strike, and others like it, “inhumane aggression” because it directly targeted civilians. “There will be no impunity for these crimes,” he said in a tweet Sunday.
Asked about the strike Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian military doesn’t target residential buildings and suggested the Dnipro building was hit as a result of Ukrainian air defense actions.
The lying, sub-human war criminals say they don't target civilian buildings. The West's response should be to give Ukraine every weapon they're asking for, with no strings attached. Let them fly a missile up Putin's ass and call it the result of Russian air defense actions.
