Italian
interior ministry says 64-year-old has been on the run since 1994 and is wanted
in Italy for involvement in Sicily's Cosa Nostra
theguardian.com,
Sandra Laville and Lizzy Davies in Rome, Thursday 8 August 2013
Domenico Rancadore, the mafia boss who has been detained on a European arrest warrant. Photograph: Italian Interior Minister Press Office/AFP/Getty Images |
A mob boss
has been arrested in London and will appear at an extradition hearing, Scotland
Yard said on Thursday.
Domenico
Rancadore, 64, is understood to have been arrested at a travel agency in the
capital. A convicted member of the mafia in Palermo, Sicily, Rancadore is
wanted in Italy, where he has been sentenced to seven years in jail.
The
Metropolitan police said Rancadore had been convicted in Italy of
"participation in the mafia" between 17 December 1987 and 1 April
1995.
Rancadore
was arrested on Wednesday evening at a residential address in Uxbridge by
officers from the extradition squad under a European arrest warrant issued in
January 2012.
Police
would not comment on why it has taken so long to carry out the warrant. It is
understood he was living under an alias in Uxbridge using the family name
Skinner.
He is in
police custody and is due to appear at Westminster magistrates court on
Thursday.
Joan Hills,
a neighbour, said she had known the family as the Skinners. "I know him
very well," she said. "He is one of the best neighbours you could
ever have. They have been here for years."
She said Mr
"Skinner" and his wife Anne had two children who had grown up in the
area. She said Mrs Skinner ran a local business.
In a
statement, the Italian interior ministry said Rancadore was a "prominent
representative" of the Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia, who had "led
a comfortable life" running a travel agency in London.
Rancadore
had been on the run since 1994, it added. "Numerous collaborators … have
described him as a prominent representative of the Palermo mafia
'family'," the statement said.
During the
1990s, it added, Rancadore had been the head of the Cosa Nostra in the Sicilian
town of Trabia.
Reportedly
a former PE teacher who continued to take his pension while in London,
Rancadore – nicknamed "the professor" – was considered one of the
most dangerous Italian fugitives.
In early
2012 the Italian daily La Repubblica reported that his whereabouts in Britain
had been recently discovered by police, but that a subsequent extradition
request had been denied by the British authorities.
The
newspaper quoted a prosecutor in Palermo at the time, Vittorio Teresi, as saying:
"The crime of mafia association is not recognised in the British legal
system. The extradition request was not even considered."
But in its
statement on Thursday, the Italian interior ministry said the arrest had come
after British police acted on information from the Italian authorities and
police in the southern city of Potenza, which allowed them to identify where he
was.
It added:
"The operation is the fruit of a significant relationship of international
police co-operation ensured by Interpol."
A
spokeswoman for the police in Potenza said she could not comment on the
reports.
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