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

A boss from one amongst most Italy’s most violent mafias who escaped from a most security jail closing 12 months by using mattress sheets has been captured in France, authorities in every nations acknowledged Friday.

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

He had escaped from a intently secured jail in Nuoro, Sardinia, in February 2023, using sheets to scale down the partitions. The escape was captured on surveillance footage and shared broadly on social media. Throughout the video, Raduano might be seen dangling from the sheets sooner than leaping to the underside and working away.

His “right-hand man,” Gianluigi Troiano, was moreover picked up near Granada in Spain, Inside Minister Matteo Piantedosi acknowledged, in what he described as “one different most important blow in the direction of organized crime.”

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

He had been serving a 24-year jail sentence for membership of a jail group, drug trafficking, holding illegal weapons and completely different crimes, consistent with Europol.

Europol acknowledged he was “on the prime” of his jail group, “with the operate of promoter, organizer and ruthless killer of the group dedicated to the perpetration of murders, drug trafficking and administration of the extortion racket”, it acknowledged.

His escape was vastly embarrassing for Italian authorities and underscored the power of the Fourth Mafia, proper now considered Italy’s most violent organized crime syndicate.

A lot much less delicate than the wealthy ‘Ndrangheta, the Naples-based Camorra or Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, the Foggia clans rely upon extortions, bombings and threats to extort locals while they interact in drug trafficking, armed robberies and automobile and livestock theft.

Raduano’s seize comes a number 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.