April 11 (Bloomberg) -- Sicilian Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano was arrested in an abandoned country house above his native town of Corleone after almost 43 years as a fugitive, police and magistrates said.
Provenzano, 73, had been the boss of bosses of the Sicilian mob, known as Cosa Nostra, since the previous Don, Salvatore Riina, was captured in 1993. He was Italy's most wanted fugitive.
``This is a great victory for the state,'' said Maurizio De Lucia, an anti-mafia magistrate at the Palermo courthouse. ``It wasn't acceptable that after almost 43 years this man was free.''
Provenzano has been convicted in absentia and given life sentences for several murders, including those of magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992. Provenzano is one of the men responsible for the rise of the Corleone family to the apex of Cosa Nostra, and earned the nickname in his youth of ``the tractor'' because he mowed down everything in his path.
Palermo magistrates De Lucia, Michele Prestipino, and Antonino Di Matteo have led the search for the boss from Corleone, birthplace of Mario Puzo's fictional ``Godfather,'' for about a decade. Provenzano was the undisputed leader of Europe's most powerful crime syndicate, suspected of having about 5,000 members, magistrates said.
Politicians who spent the night waiting for results in Italy's national election unanimously welcomed the news and praised the work of the police forces and investigative magistrates. That's after a campaign in which the problem of organized crime in southern Italy was ignored by the two candidates for prime minister, Romano Prodi and Silvio Berlusconi.
Prodi declared victory after having won the Chamber of Deputies by 25,000 votes. While the Senate is still unclear, the count appears to favor a two-seat majority for Prodi. As Italy's government changes, so does the leadership of Cosa Nostra.
``We're all asking ourselves about the timing of this arrest,'' said Paolo Pezzino, a professor of history at the University of Pisa and author of a 1999 book on organized crime. ``It's most likely a coincidence as neither side has more to gain from Provenzano's arrest than the other.''
To contact the reporter on this story:Steve Scherer in Palermo at sscherer@bloomberg.net.
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