Italian Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, who was one of the country’s most wanted men until his capture earlier this year, has died.
The 61-year-old was thought to be a boss of the notorious Cosa Nostra Mafia and spent 30 years on the run before he was detained in January.
He was being treated for cancer at the time of his arrest and was moved from prison to hospital last month.
Denaro was thought to have been responsible for numerous murders.
He was tried and sentenced to life in jail in absentia in 2002 for crimes including involvement in the 1992 killing of anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino and once boasted he could “fill a cemetery” with his victims.
He also oversaw racketeering, illegal waste dumping, money-laundering and drug-trafficking for the Cosa Nostra organised crime syndicate.
Although he had been a fugitive since 1993, Messina Denaro was thought to have still been issuing orders to his subordinates from various secret locations.
According to local media, he fell into an irreversible coma on Friday at a hospital in the central Italian city of L’Aquila, after requesting that he be given no aggressive medical treatment.
He had undergone surgery in recent months for issues to do with his cancer, but had reportedly not recovered following the latest operation.
L’Aquila Mayor Pierluigi Biondi confirmed Denaro’s death, writing on X (formerly Twitter) that it was “the epilogue of an existence lived without remorse or regret, a painful chapter in recent history that we cannot erase.”
