MADRID — Spain’s Interior Ministry says it has arrested a leading drug lord belonging to the Italian Camorra organized crime syndicate.
The ministry says Spanish police in collaboration with Italian counterparts captured 58-year-old Pasquale Claudio Locatelli as he arrived at Madrid’s Barajas international airport to meet his son who had flown in from Italy.
Locatelli had been on the run since he escaped from a French jail in southeastern Grasse in Sept. 1989 while on a visit to a hospital.
The Neapolitan mafia leader had been serving a prison sentence and is wanted by French and Italian authorities. The ministry said Saturday that Locatelli is an important conduit into Europe for cocaine from South America and hashish from north Africa.
