<p>Italian anti-mafia police caught Sicilian godfather Matteo Messina Denaro on Monday, ending a 30-year manhunt for Italy's most wanted fugitive.</p>.<p>A trigger man who once reportedly boasted he could "fill a cemetery" with his victims, the 60-year-old Messina Denaro was a leading figure in Cosa Nostra, the real-life Sicilian crime syndicate depicted in the Godfather movies.</p>.<p>The mobster was nabbed "inside a health facility in Palermo, where he had gone for therapeutic treatment", special operations commander Pasquale Angelosanto said in a statement released by the police.</p>.<p>He had been in the clinic for a year, undergoing periodic treatment for colon cancer under a false name, and did not resist arrest, ANSA news agency said.</p>.<p>Criminology expert Anna Sergi at the University of Essex said Messina Denaro was "the last one, the most resilient one, the 'purest' Sicilian mafioso remaining".</p>.<p>"The secrets he is said to keep fuel conspiracies around mafia-state agreements in the 1990s," she told <em>AFP.</em></p>.<p>"He is the essence of the great historical power of Cosa Nostra. The myths around his period on the run are part of the reason why the Mafia myth endures."</p>.<p>Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Messina Denaro was the "most significant" mafia boss and his arrest in his native Sicily was a "great victory" for the state in its war against organised crime.</p>.<p>A photograph released by police showed Messina Denaro in the back seat of a vehicle, wearing a cream hat, sunglasses, and a brown leather jacket with a cream sheepskin lining.</p>.<p>Before that, the only known photo of him dated back to the early 1990s. He had been on the run since 1993.</p>.<p>Messina Denaro was arrested a day after the 30th anniversary of the arrest of Salvatore "The Beast" Riina, the Cosa Nostra boss who died in 2017.</p>.<p>He had been number one on Italy's most-wanted list, accused of mafia association, multiple murders, and use of explosives.</p>.<p>Messina Denaro is suspected to have been behind the 1993 bombings in Rome, Milan, and Florence that killed 10 people, just months after Cosa Nostra murdered anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in similar attacks.</p>.<p>The arrest of "an extremely dangerous fugitive" was "an extraordinary day for the state", Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said.</p>.<p>In 2015, police discovered Messina Denaro 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.</p>.<p>Investigators spent decades searching the homes and businesses of the boss's known allies on the island.</p>.<p>They looked in particular for hiding places in grottoes, caverns or even bunkers inside buildings where the man nicknamed "Diabolik" could be concealed.</p>
<p>Italian anti-mafia police caught Sicilian godfather Matteo Messina Denaro on Monday, ending a 30-year manhunt for Italy's most wanted fugitive.</p>.<p>A trigger man who once reportedly boasted he could "fill a cemetery" with his victims, the 60-year-old Messina Denaro was a leading figure in Cosa Nostra, the real-life Sicilian crime syndicate depicted in the Godfather movies.</p>.<p>The mobster was nabbed "inside a health facility in Palermo, where he had gone for therapeutic treatment", special operations commander Pasquale Angelosanto said in a statement released by the police.</p>.<p>He had been in the clinic for a year, undergoing periodic treatment for colon cancer under a false name, and did not resist arrest, ANSA news agency said.</p>.<p>Criminology expert Anna Sergi at the University of Essex said Messina Denaro was "the last one, the most resilient one, the 'purest' Sicilian mafioso remaining".</p>.<p>"The secrets he is said to keep fuel conspiracies around mafia-state agreements in the 1990s," she told <em>AFP.</em></p>.<p>"He is the essence of the great historical power of Cosa Nostra. The myths around his period on the run are part of the reason why the Mafia myth endures."</p>.<p>Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Messina Denaro was the "most significant" mafia boss and his arrest in his native Sicily was a "great victory" for the state in its war against organised crime.</p>.<p>A photograph released by police showed Messina Denaro in the back seat of a vehicle, wearing a cream hat, sunglasses, and a brown leather jacket with a cream sheepskin lining.</p>.<p>Before that, the only known photo of him dated back to the early 1990s. He had been on the run since 1993.</p>.<p>Messina Denaro was arrested a day after the 30th anniversary of the arrest of Salvatore "The Beast" Riina, the Cosa Nostra boss who died in 2017.</p>.<p>He had been number one on Italy's most-wanted list, accused of mafia association, multiple murders, and use of explosives.</p>.<p>Messina Denaro is suspected to have been behind the 1993 bombings in Rome, Milan, and Florence that killed 10 people, just months after Cosa Nostra murdered anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in similar attacks.</p>.<p>The arrest of "an extremely dangerous fugitive" was "an extraordinary day for the state", Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said.</p>.<p>In 2015, police discovered Messina Denaro 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.</p>.<p>Investigators spent decades searching the homes and businesses of the boss's known allies on the island.</p>.<p>They looked in particular for hiding places in grottoes, caverns or even bunkers inside buildings where the man nicknamed "Diabolik" could be concealed.</p>