Lucca, 20 May (AKI) – Italian police on Thursday arrested fugitive Neapolitan mafia drug baron Michele Chierchia at a villa near Fiumicino airport outside Rome. The felon was listed among the country’s 100 most dangerous fugitives, and anti-mafia prosecutors in three different regions had issued arrest warrants for him on drug trafficking charges.
Fifty-eight year-old Chierchia reportedly congratulated the anti-drugs police from the central Italian city of Lucca when they arrested him, marvelling at how they had found his hideout. He was taken to police headquarters in Rome.
His arrest followed a police investigation that began in April in the area of Tuscany surrounding Lucca, where two of Chierchia’s two children lived.
Last weekend, Lucca police managed to track Chierchia to the suburb of Fiumicino.
Chierchia had been living in the villa for some time, only making occasional trips to the Campania region surrounding Naples, where he was a local mafia boss in the southern city’s Torre Annunziata district.
Arrest warrants against Chierchia were issued by anti-mafia prosecutors in Lucca, Naples and in the Sardinia region’s capital, Cagliari.
Earlier on Thursday, Italian police arrested seven people near Rome with suspected links to the Naples’ mafia or Camorra.
Police also seized property worth 4 million euros in the early morning operation in the Rome and Latina provinces near the Italian capital.
Those arrested in that operation are believed to be members of the Naples mafia’s powerful Casalesi clan. Fugitive Pasquale Noviello was reported to be among those arrested
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