Italian mafia boss who escaped maximum security prison using bed sheets last year is captured on French island

A boss from considered one of most Italy’s most violent mafias who escaped from a most safety jail final 12 months by utilizing mattress sheets has been captured in France, authorities in each international locations mentioned Friday.

Marco Raduano, described as “harmful” on Europol’s listing of Europe’s most needed criminals, was detained in Bastia on the French island of Corsica.

He had escaped from a closely secured jail in Nuoro, Sardinia, in February 2023, utilizing sheets to scale down the partitions. The escape was captured on surveillance footage and shared broadly on social media. Within the video, Raduano may be seen dangling from the sheets earlier than leaping to the bottom and working away.

His “right-hand man,” Gianluigi Troiano, was additionally picked up close to Granada in Spain, Inside Minister Matteo Piantedosi mentioned, in what he described as “one other main blow in opposition to organized crime.”

Raduano, 40, is the boss of the agricultural Gargano clan working inside a younger and little-known organised crime syndicate in Foggia, within the southern Italian area of Puglia, generally known as the Fourth Mafia.

He had been serving a 24-year jail sentence for membership of a prison group, drug trafficking, holding unlawful weapons and different crimes, based on Europol.

Europol mentioned he was “on the high” of his prison group, “with the function of promoter, organizer and ruthless killer of the group devoted to the perpetration of murders, drug trafficking and administration of the extortion racket”, it mentioned.

His escape was vastly embarrassing for Italian authorities and underscored the facility of the Fourth Mafia, at the moment thought-about Italy’s most violent organized crime syndicate.

Much less refined than the rich ‘Ndrangheta, the Naples-based Camorra or Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, the Foggia clans depend on extortions, bombings and threats to extort locals at the same time as they have interaction in drug trafficking, armed robberies and car and livestock theft.

Raduano’s seize comes a couple of 12 months after authorities arrested Italy’s most-wanted fugitive, taking mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro into custody after a 30-year manhunt. In September, Messina Denaro died in a hospital jail ward.