Former Camorra mafia boss and
hitman Pasquale Scotti was captured in Brazil on Tuesday after
almost 31 years on the run.
Scotti was a key figure in the New Organised Camorra, a
crime syndicate established in the southern Campania region in
the late 1970s by Raffaele Cutolo, to whom he was close.
He was arrested in 1983 and briefly collaborated with the
judicial authorities before going underground the following
December after an escape from a Caserta hospital where he was
receiving treatment for a hand injury sustained during a
shoot-out.
An international arrest warrant was issued against him in
1990.
Scotti was in possession of a false identity document
attributed to an Italo-Brazilian restaurant owner at the time of
his arrest in the north-eastern coastal city of Recife.
Interior Minister Angelino Alfano described his capture as
an "extraordinary blow".
"The hunt for fugitives goes beyond the confines of our
country to form a network of legality binding all those states
that are committed to rooting out all possible criminal
infiltration," Alfano said.
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