Mafia boss Rocco Morabito, a drug trafficker on the run since his escape from a Uruguayan prison in June 2019, was captured Monday in the city of Joao Pessoa (northeastern Brazil), according to the authorities.
Considered to be the boss of the 'Ndrangheta (Calabrian mafia), he was apprehended "along with another Italian fugitive" - his identity has not been revealed - following a "joint investigation between Brazil and Italy ", said the Brazilian Federal Police (PF) in a statement.
Sunday, "a team of Italian police officers from the Interpol central office in Rome, who participated in the investigation, and carabinieri, went to Brazil with a view to arrest," she said. .
He is one of Italy's most wanted offenders, according to FP.
"There are traces of Rocco Morabito's actions in the organization of drug trafficking between Brazil and Europe since the 1990s," explained the PF, which is due to expose the details of the operation to the Tuesday. opportunity for a press conference.
The Supreme Court (STF) had ordered the arrest of this 54-year-old Italian who was the subject of an Interpol red notice for having belonged, from 1988 to 1994, to a criminal organization dedicated to international drug trafficking.
He is notably accused of having transported drugs to Italy, their sale in Milan, then of trying to import cocaine from Brazil - 592 kilos in 1992, 630 kilos in 1993.
The "king of cocaine"
Accused of illegal association and drug trafficking, Rocco Morabito had been wanted since 1995 by the Italian courts.
He was sentenced in absentia to 28 years in prison, a sentence later increased to 30 years in prison.
The Italian, considered one of the ten most wanted criminals in the world, was arrested in September 2017 in a hotel in Montevideo after having resided for 13 years under another identity in the upscale Uruguayan resort of Punta del Este, 140 km from the capital.
In 2004, he obtained Uruguayan papers by presenting a Brazilian passport in the name of Francisco Capeletto.
He was finally spotted after enrolling his daughter in college under his real identity.
Uruguayan justice approved his extradition to Italy in 2018 but he managed, in June 2019, to escape from Montevideo central prison through its roof.
He had been on the run ever since.
Rocco Morabito had escaped arrest in 1994 in Milan, where he was nicknamed the "king of cocaine".
Originally from Africo, a Calabrian village, he was one of the most important leaders of the "Africo Nuovo" clan.
With AFP
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