The leader of an Italian mafia group, Marco Raduano, who escaped in February 2023, was arrested on Thursday, February 1, in Haute-Corse, the French and Italian authorities announced on Friday. Mr Raduano, 40, is suspected of leading the “Società Foggiana”, a mafia group active in the Italian province of Foggia, Puglia (southern Italy). According to a source close to the case at AFP, the Italian mafioso was arrested Thursday evening in Aléria, in the east of the island, while he was dining in a restaurant with a young woman. According to Europol, Mr Raduano was “at the head” of this criminal organization as the “sponsor, organizer and merciless killer of the group”.
His right-hand man, Gianluigi Troiana, who had been on the run since 2021, was simultaneously arrested in Otura, near Granada, in the south of Spain, according to a press release from the carabinieri. “The arrest abroad of two dangerous fugitives, the boss Marco Raduano and his right-hand man Gianluigi Troiana (…), represents a new blow to crime,” welcomed the Italian Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, on the account of his ministry on
Escape using sheets
Marco Raduano, alias “Faccia d’angelo” (“angel face”), escaped in February 2023 from a high-security section of Nuoro prison, in Sardinia, using several knotted sheets to one another. He then went down along the prison wall, before fleeing. He was serving a twenty-four-year prison sentence for membership in a mafia organization, drug trafficking, illegal possession of weapons and other crimes, according to Europol. In another ongoing case, he is accused of two murders committed in 2017 and for which Gianluigi Troiana is also being prosecuted, according to the Italian Carabinieri. His right-hand man, Gianluigi Troiana, had been on the run since 2021, while he was serving a sentence, under house arrest, of nine years and two months.
Long underestimated, the Foggia Mafia, known as the “fourth Mafia” due to its later appearance – the other three being the Cosa Nostra in Sicily, the ‘Ndrangheta in Calabria and the Camorra of Naples – is currently considered the one of the most violent on the peninsula. Its eradication has become “a national emergency”, in the words of former national anti-mafia prosecutor Francesco De Raho.