'Ndrangheta kingpin nabbed after 17 years on run
Giovanni Tegano, 70, was on 30 most wanted list
27 April, 12:29
(ANSA) - Reggio Calabria, April 27 - Italian police on
Monday night captured one of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta crime
syndicate's biggest bosses, Giovanni Tegano.Tegano, 70, on the run since 1993 and one of Italy's 30 most wanted criminals, was arrested in a raid on an apartment in the outskirts of Reggio Calabria.
He has been sentenced in absentia to life for murder, arms trafficking and other mafia offences.
"This is the hardest hit 'Ndrangheta could have taken because Tegano was their top boss in hiding," said Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni who as part of a new anti-mafia plan has set up a confiscations agency in Reggio.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano sent his congratulations to police.
Calabria Governor Giuseppe Scopelliti said Tegano's arrest was "further proof of the presence of the State in Calabria," where the Italian government has beefed up security forces to combat what is now considered Italy's most powerful mafia thanks to its hold on the European cocaine trade and its deep local roots.
Tegano was applauded by a group of friends, relatives and supporters when he came out of the Reggio Calabria court house on his way to jail Tuesday.
They chanted "Giovanni, man of peace".
Tegano was one of the "great survivors" of 'Ndrangheta turf wars that tore the southern Italian region in the 1960s and 1970s, police said.
He is believed to have been one of the main architects of the modernisation and growth of the Calabrian mafia. Despite working through the 1980s and 1990s to build its empire, forge ties to local politicians and make itself ever more impenetrable, 'Ndrangheta was not as well known as its Campanian and Sicilian cousins Camorra and Cosa Nostra until a headline-grabbing massacre in the German town of Duisburg in August 2007.
The Italian government cracked down hard on the Mob after that incident and, more recently, after race riots in the town of Rosarno in which 'Ndrangheta is believed to have been involved.
The word 'Ndrangheta comes from an ancient Greek term meaning honour or virtue.
