An underground bunker believed to have been used by Mateo Messina Denaro (60), the head of the Italian Sicilian mafia organization 'Cosa Nostra', who was caught after 30 years of escape has been discovered.
Italian military and police found an underground bunker in a house in Campobello di Mazara in the Trapani region of Sicily on the 18th (local time), according to local media such as the daily newspapers 'La Repubblica' and 'Corriere della Sera'. have reported
Inside the home, owned by ex-mafia member Erico Risalvato, military and police forces pushed aside a closet full of clothes, revealing an entrance to an underground bunker.
This underground bunker is about 400 meters away from Denaro's first hideout, which the military and police found the day before.
The military and police launched an extensive search, believing that Denaro may have used the underground bunker for evacuation in case of emergency or as a place to store important documents and money.
As the successor of Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano, the godfather of the Sicilian mafia, 'Toto', Denaro has led the organization 'Cosa Nostra' even while on the run.
Informants who provide information about the Mafia to the military and police claimed that Denaro had hidden and kept Riina's 'secret ledger' when Riina was arrested in 1993.
The military and police are investigating the 1992 murder of Prosecutor Giovanni Falcone and Judge Paolo Borsellino, who led the crackdown on the Mafia, and the 1993 bombings in Milan, Rome, and Florence that claimed the lives of 10 people, as well as the testimony of former Mafia members in the same year. They are believed to have played a key role in numerous crimes, including the kidnapping and brutal murder of his 12-year-old son after holding him in captivity for over two years.
Denaro was tried in absentia in 2002 for killing or abetting the killing of dozens of others and had already been sentenced to life in prison.
Nicknamed 'Diabolik', an Italian cartoon character, Denaro was born in 1962 in Trapani, on the western tip of the island of Sicily.
Following in the footsteps of his father, a former mafia boss, Denaro entered the mafia world and made his fortune in waste disposal, wind power and retail.
Denaro, who has been on the run since June 1993 and has been wanted, was caught at a private clinic in Palermo, the capital of Sicily, on the 16th and ended 30 years of escape.
(Photo = Italian ANSA communication website capture, Yonhap News)