UK: Mafia boss on the run held
London: Scotland Yard arrested a mafia boss, Domenico Rancadore, 64, who had been on the run from the Italian police for almost two decades. The extradition will start once he is presented in the Westminster magistrates’ court on Thursday.
Scotland Yard arrested a Mafia boss, 64- year- old Domenico Rancadore, who had been on the run from the Italian police for almost two decades.
He is in the police custody and the process of extradition will start once he is presented in the Westminster magistrates’ court in London on Thursday.
Rancadore, a former physical education teacher in Sicily, went on the run in 1994. He ran a travel agency in London and led a comfortable life with his wife and two children, according to Italy’s home ministry.
The Met police said on Thursday that it its extradition unit officers had arrested Rancadore at Uxbridge in London at 7 pm on Wednesday.
Rancadore, a member of Cosa Nostra, was arrested on a European Arrest Warrant alleging that “he has an outstanding sentence of seven years imprisonment to serve for participation in Mafia association between 17 December 1987 and 13 April 1995 in Palermo, Italy.”
Rancadore has been accused by the Italian police of association with the Mafia, extortion and other serious crimes. He was the head of a Sicilian crime family involved in extortion, racketeering and drug trafficking.
Rancadore was sentenced in his absence to seven years in prison for crimes in Italy between 1987 and 1995. The Italian home ministry said on Thursday that several witnesses, who were cooperating with the police, had described Rancadore as a leading exponent of the Mafia in the province Palermo, a region in Sicily.