The latest news:

'Godfather' Bernardino Provenzano was arrested in Corleone! There is not much details about it, but it's 100% sure.

Source source source!

ROME, Italy (AP) -- Italy's reputed No. 1 Mafia boss, Bernardo Provenzano, has been arrested in Sicily, the ANSA news agency has reported, citing prosecutors.

Provenzano, Italy's most wanted man, went on the run more than four decades ago and is believed to have taken over the Sicilian Mafia after the 1993 arrest of former boss Salvatore "Toto" Riina in Palermo.

As recently as last month, Provenzano's former lawyer was quoted as telling an Italian newspaper that the elusive man was dead.

"I think he (Provenzano)'s dead, and has been dead for several years," Salvatore Traina was quoted as telling Rome-based daily La Repubblica.

"They have looked for him everywhere, they have looked intensely for years but they can't find him. This must mean something."

Source: CNN.Com

Yes. According to http://www.repubblica.it he was caught at around 10 this morning (local time), in a small countryside house outside his hometown of Corleone. Apparently, the authorities were notified of his whereabouts by one of his messengers.

It's being corroborated all over the place:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4898930.stm

It's a mayor victory for the Justice Department of Italy, so it's really big news. Now we have to wait if the judges finally (after a lot of years of prosecuting I think) will come to a verdict, at the time they are ready Provenzano will be a lot of years older and thus maybe sick/dead.

The first photos of Bernardo Provenzano in many years are now published on http://www.repubblica.it
There even a video of Provenzano being taken to the questura. Here is the link.

After all those years...Madonn'!

The real question now: Will they show footage of The Godfather at the trial, only to ask, "Is that an adequate definition of the actions you and your associates engaged in?"

He had a good run!
I can't believe he has finally been caught,somebody must have ratted him out,surely?

The last picture of him was taken in 1959.

He had the world record of hiding for the police, namely 43 years, since 1963.

Don't you also think he is smiling on the picture in this link?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4898930.stm

any idea who might be the next in line to take over? -take it easy

Maybe Matteo Messina Denaro

Ma il vero boss mafioso qui da noi è Silvio Berlusconi:è tutto in mano a lui...

Yes, but he and his allies (Li Gati), maybe have to fight binnus old allies in Palermo (Lo Piccolo) and in the rest of the island (falsone), to get this position

Mafia 'boss of bosses' arrested at last
08:28am 12th April 2006

Bernardo Provenzano, the undisputed chief of the Sicilian Mafia who had been on the run for more than four decades, has been arrested while hiding in a farmhouse near Corleone in Sicily.
"Thank God. The hunt is finally over," said Palermo police chief Giuseppe Caruso after agents seized Italy's most wanted man, scoring the state's biggest success against the Mafia in more than 13 years.

National anti-Mafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso accused businessmen, politicians and other professionals of shielding Provenzano for many years, but did not elaborate.



Provenzano, known as the "Phantom of Corleone" after his native hill town, made famous by the Godfather films, has been running the Mafia since former "boss of bosses" Toto Riina was arrested in 1993.

He was arrested when some 50 policemen swooped on a farmhouse in the countryside near Corleone. Police said their lucky break came when they tracked a package that had been sent to Provenzano by his wife, who lived in Corleone.

Provenzano, who put up no resistance and acknowledged his identity after first denying it, appeared surprised to be caught, police said. He was flown to Palermo and taken to the main police station there. Roads leading from the airport into town were closed to traffic.

An angry crowd shouted "Assassin" and "Bastard" at Provenzano as policemen wearing black balaclavas escorted him into the building.

"We are the real Sicily," chanted an angry group of youths from an anti-Mafia association. President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi expressed his delight at the arrest to Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu.

The news bumped even national election results off the top spot on television news bulletins. Provenzano, 73, has been wanted since 1963 and was known as Italy's "super-fugitive".

He had been sentenced in absentia to life in jail in connection with the Mafia's most notorious crimes of recent decades, including the killings in 1992 of top anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

One of the last pictures police had of him was taken when he was 25. They had since been using computer depictions of how he might have aged, aided by information from turncoat Mafiosi.

Cryptic notes

Police said they had found cryptic notes on small pieces of paper known as "pizzini" which Provenzano used to communicate with accomplices and his family. More notes were found in the pockets of the jeans he was wearing when he was arrested.

Grasso said he doubted Provenzano would ever collaborate with the authorities.

As a young man he was known as "Binnu the tractor" because of the way he mowed down enemies when a rising hitman of the Corleone clan.

His ability to evade capture for so many years while remaining in Sicily had become legendary.

Investigators say that while running the Mafia for the past 13 years, Provenzano instituted a "kinder, gentler" style in an attempt to give the crime organisation a lower profile in the hope that the police would pay it less attention.

They say one of two crime bosses - Salvatore Lo Piccolo, on the run since 1983, or Matteo Messina Denaro, a fugitive since 1993 - was in pole position to take over running the mob.


Reuters Wire
-----------------------------------------------------------


Don Cardi

Lets hope the white fox makes it, and not that brutal blind son of a bitch from Castelvetrano.

You have to wonder why he decided to come back to Corleone after being on the run for 43 years. This tells me he may have gotten tired of being on the lam, and may have wanted to get caught.

Buono, Gabriele!
Perhaps Provenzano's arrest is tied to Berlusconi's electoral problems. Let's look for a connection in the days ahead. Provenzano may be saying to himself, "Dove e lo Zio Giulio [Andreotti] attualmente?"

Hmm, I have to disagree.

I think he was just in and around Corleone all the time, and it's an often heard rumor that he also was in down town Palermo at some times. Just like Toto Riina who arrested in the middle of Palermo.

Being on the run for 43 years is mentally devastating, but I don't think he wanted to be caught.

Totally agreed.
BTW, I like your sig very much, Enzo. People who celebrate mafia and mafiosi should pay attention to it.

He looks well for a man of his age that's been on the run (though I'm basing that on still pictures).

I thought the same thing. Although, if I'm not mistaking, he had plastic surgery one or two years ago, to alter his apperance. So maybe that's why.

This was no plastic surgery, but a operation of his prostata (or who do you say it in english) in Nice France (thats where they got his DNA from). By the way the Operation was paid by the ??"illness?? insurency (i hope u understand what i mean) of the Italian State (of course because he was having this OP under the identity of a honest normal sicilian).

It was in Marseille, and he did the operation under the name of Gaspare Troia, who was an honest baker and the father of one of the top people around Provenzano. It was indeed paid by the Italian health care.

You paid for his operation Lavinia, do you know that?

I don't mind it too much. He was ill, he had to be cured. What I mind much more is that he could count on multi-leveled complicity throughout these last 43 years.

I don't mind it too much. He was ill, he had to be cured. [/b][/quote]Of course but he made billions over all these years, and he didn't paid a single lira for it to social security.

this is the smallest of his crimes, I guess.

I don't mind it too much. He was ill, he had to be cured. [/b][/quote]Lavi, let me hug you, dear.

Mafia 'godfather' remains silent

Thursday, April 20, 2006; Posted: 10:14 a.m. EDT (14:14 GMT)

Bernardo Provenzano is transferred to a maximum security prison in Terni, central Italy.
Image:


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Italian police arrest reputed Mafia boss. (2:19)
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Manage Alerts | What Is This? ROME, Italy (AP) -- Accused Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano refused to answer prosecutors' questions Thursday, ending his first official interrogation since his arrest after eight minutes, his lawyer said.

Three prosecutors and a top police official from Palermo, Sicily, questioned Provenzano in the presence of his lawyer, Franco Marasa.

The accused mobster answered the initial, routine queries such as name and date and place of birth, then clammed up as soon as the prosecutors read him his rights, said Marasa, who was reached on his cell phone.

"He said 'I intend to avail myself of my right not to answer,"' Marasa said, quoting his client.

Provenzano was interrogated at the prison in Terni, central Italy, where he is being kept in an isolation cell.

Prosecutors Giuseppe Pignatone, Marzia Sabelli and Michele Prestipino were traveling Thursday afternoon and could not be reached for comment. They did not immediately return a message left at their office in Palermo.

The accused mobster was captured April 11, more than 40 years after he went into hiding, and is believed to have taken over leadership of the Sicilian Mafia following the 1993 arrest of former boss Salvatore "Toto" Riina.

Provenzano was arrested at a rundown farmhouse just outside his hometown of Corleone, which was made famous by "The Godfather" movies.

During his years as a fugitive, Provenzano was convicted in absentia and given life sentences for more than a dozen murders of mobsters and investigators. There are six ongoing cases against him on charges that range from murder to extortion and money laundering, Marasa said.

His first court hearing in one of those cases is scheduled for May 2 at an appeal court in Palermo, and Provenzano is expected to appear via teleconference, his lawyer said.

Marasa said Provenzano cannot be moved, is not allowed visitors and can only meet with his immediate family once a month for one hour.

Asked how Provenzano was doing, Marasa' answered, "Him? Normal," then added that he would not answer "personal" questions.

Police have said that Provenzano communicated with his accomplices through typewritten notes that were written in code to conceal the identities of those he dealt with.

Piero Grasso, national anti-Mafia prosecutor, said Wednesday that investigators were trying to decipher the code with help from a former top Provenzano lieutenant who has become a turncoat.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.