Mafia boss who escaped from prison with knotted sheets caught
An Italian mafia boss who escaped from prison by knotting bedsheets has been captured on the French island of Corsica after a year on the run.
Video of the jailbreak shows Marco Raduano, 40, climbing out of his sheets before falling onto the grass in the prison yard. He then reportedly left the house through a patio door, to which he had somehow obtained the key.
Raduano was arrested on Thursday while having dinner with a young woman at a restaurant in the city of Bastia, AFP reported.
"Forgiana Society"
Raduano is reported to be the leader of the Società Foggiana, a branch of the organized crime group Sacra Corona Unita. In 2018, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison for drug trafficking and was on trial for murder when he made his daring escape.
Italian authorities said Raduano's close associate Gianluigi Troiano was also arrested near Granada in southern Spain.
The arrest of two dangerous fugitives abroad, Marco Raduano and his right-hand man Gianluigi Troiano, by the Italian Carabinieri is another serious blow against organized crime,” said Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi.
Raduano's disappearance last year went unnoticed for two hours, despite security footage capturing the incident. Prison officials said he escaped during a shift when only one corrections officer was on duty due to staffing shortages.
The gangster had been a model prisoner so far and got a good job in the library upstairs. Investigators said at the time that this may have given him access to guards' schedules as they patrolled the fence.
Sacra Corona Unita Illegal Gambling
The headquarters of Holy Crown Solidarity is mainly located in the Puglia region in the "heel" of Italy. Their sources of income include drug trafficking, prostitution, arms trafficking, extortion and illegal gambling.
As its name suggests, the Società Foggiana is based in the neighboring region of Foggia and is considered one of the most brutal and violent of all Italian mafia groups. It was notorious for crushing the skulls of its victims with shotguns so that their relatives could not give them traditional open-coffin funerals. Raduano allegedly guarded his personal arsenal with a large python.
In 2018, Italian authorities dismantled a €4.5 billion illegal online gambling ring run by the Sacra Corona Unita, Sicily's Cosa Nostra and Calabria's Ndrangheta.
Prosecutors said Raduano's forces played an important role in bringing Sicilian and Calabrian factions together and used their technical expertise to carry out the operation.
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Source: www.casino.org
