Anti-Mafia detectives edged one step closer yesterday to catching Sicily’s most notorious godfather, Bernardo Provenzano, after they arrested a key associate who is thought to have been in close contact with the fugitive leader of Cosa Nostra.
Salvatore Sciarrabba (53) was seized in a dawn raid on a flat in Palermo. Police found three handguns and three knives in the flat, as well as â,¬20 000, mobiles phones and walkie talkies.
Sciarrabba, whom Palermo police chief Francesco Cirillo described as ”a top level Cosa Nostra boss”, made no comment on his arrest. He ran mafia operations in a well known Mafia hotbed near Palermo and is thought to have helped Provenzano hide from the police.
Police had been hunting Sciarrabba for six years. He was handed an eight year prison sentence in absentia two years ago, for Mafia association. His flat, near the Palermo courthouse, was full of notes containing phone numbers and recording the flow of mafia money in the area. He is thought to have been promoted to fill the gap left by Benedetto Spera, Provenzano’s right hand man, who was arrested in January 2001. Italian media said police hesitated before arresting Sciarrabba, hoping he could lead them to Provenzano.
Provenzano (70) is thought to have taken over as the head of the Sicilian Mafia in 1993, when Salvatore Riina, the ”boss of bosses” was arrested.
Informers’ reports suggest Provenzano has killed at least 40 people, including rival mafia bosses blocking his path to the top. Police have hunted him for 40 years and their most recent photograph is about 30 years old. They have generated a computer image of him as an elderly man.
Provenzano, known as the Corleone Phantom, went on the run on September 18 1963, after police named him as a suspect in the murder of a rival gangster, Paolo Streva.
A month earlier he had gone to hospital for treatment for a bullet wound to his head, an injury he sustained in a feud that led to the killings of 52 men that summer.
Provenzano is increasingly alone. Key Mafia bosses, Benedetto Spera, Vincenzo Virga and Antonino Giuffre, have been arrested, spilling vital information on what remains of Cosa Nostra.
Giuffre, arrested in April, has suggested the Sicilian Mafia had direct contact with Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and former prime minister, Giulio Andreotti. The Palermo prosecutor, Pietro Grasso, said yesterday that his men would keep ”cutting down each branch Provenzano tries to climb.”
Mafia supergrasses have testified that Provenzano was behind the decision to kill Roberto Calvi, who in 1982 was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London.
The reward for information leading to the capture of Provenzano now stands at £1,75-million. But Sicilians, who still fear the Mafia, have never shown any interest. – Guardian Unlimited Â