After 30 years on the run, Matteo Messina Denaro, one of Italy's most wanted men, was arrested on Monday at a private clinic in Palermo, Sicily, where he was undergoing treatment for cancer. 

One of the bosses of the Cosa Nostra Mafia in Sicily, Denaro was one of Europol's most wanted fugitives, known for his alleged involvement in dozens of Mafia-related murders and fatal bombings in Milan, Florence and Rome in the 1990s.

 His father and godfather were both members of the mob, as were his siblings. In 2013, his sister, Patrizia Messina Denaro, was arrested and later sentenced to 14 years in prison for being a member of the Mafia.

 He was accused of killing two anti-Mafia judges in 1992, as well as strangling the partner of a rival Mafia boss, who was pregnant at the time of her death. He also allegedly kidnapped the 12-year-old son of a man who was testifying against him, holding him hostage for two years before strangling the boy then dissolving his body in acid to prevent the family from burying him. In 2002, Denaro was convicted of a number of crimes in absentia and sentenced to life in prison.

 In May 2011, police were surveilling him at a farmhouse near his home town of Castelvetrano, but failed to arrest him, despite the involvement of hundreds of officers.

 And in 2021, a British man was arrested at a restaurant in the Hague after anti-mafia police wrongly identified him as Denaro.

 Carabinieri General Pasquale Angelosanto, who heads the police force's special operations squad, said Messina Denaro's health, along with a mix of old-school policing and modern technology, were key to his capture.