Top Mafia Boss Arrested

Italy's most important mafia leader, Bernardo Provenzano, a shadowy figure who has been on the run from police for more than four decades, was arrested today in Sicily, the country's interior ministry said.

Mr Provenzano, 73, who investigators believe took over as head of the Sicilian mafia after the arrest in 1993 of then-boss Salvatore 'Toto' Riina, has been on the run since an arrest warrant was issued against him in 1963 over a murder allegation.

Police had arrested "the man who, after the arrest of Toto Riina, is considered the most important person from Cosa Nostra", interior ministry official Alfredo Mantovano said. It marks the Italian state's biggest victory against organised crime since Riina was seized.

Such is Mr Provenzano's legendary status in Italy that news of his arrest pushed even coverage of the country's cliffhanger general election from the top of television news bulletins.

A spokesman for police in Palermo said Mr Provenzano had been arrested "a short while ago" near Corleone, the Sicilian hill town just south of Palermo where he was born, made notorious by the Godfather films. The last picture police had of Mr Provenzano was taken in 1959. Family members and his former lawyer had long insisted he was dead. "I think he's dead, and has been dead for several years," lawyer Salvatore Traina told La Repubblica newspaper last month. "They have looked for him everywhere, they have looked intensely for years but they can't find him. This must mean something."

Known variously as the "Phantom of Corleone" and "The Tractor" because of his ruthlessness in mowing down opponents, Mr Provenzano was implicated in a series of killings in the late 1950s and early 1960s connected to a power struggle within the Sicilian mafia.

He went on the run after police sought his arrest over one of these killings, but still rose through the mafia ranks, reportedly becoming Riina's second in command in 1974.

Mr Provenzano has been sentenced in absentia to life in prison in connection with the Mafia's most notorious recent crimes, including the murders in 1992 of anti-mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.