Italian Edgardo Greco, a suspected member of the Calabrian mafia, the ‘ndrangheta, was arrested Thursday morning in Saint-Etienne in east-central France after 16 years on the run, Interpol said.
This sixty-year-old, sentenced to life imprisonment, was arrested by the French police thanks to information shared by the Italian carabinieri between the two partner countries thanks to the I-Can project (Interpol cooperation against the ‘ndrangheta).
“Great satisfaction for this important operation, carried out also thanks to the significant synergies developed within the framework of an international collaborative network between police forces. The arrest of dangerous refugees continues,” Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi commented on the arrest on Twitter.
“The activity of law enforcement agencies is incessant and day by day, in Italy and abroad, tacitly involved in a continuous work to protect the security of citizens,” he added. “The state’s determined action against all forms of organized crime” will be continued “with determination,” he promised.
Edgardo Greco, 63, worked in the evenings as a pizza maker in a pizzeria in Saint-Etienne and, according to the Italian news agency AGI, called himself Paolo Dimitri – the identity of a criminal from Puglia.
The fugitive was the subject of a European arrest warrant from the prosecutor’s office in Catanzaro (Calabria, southern Italy) in 2014 after being sentenced to life imprisonment for two murders in January 1991 and one attempted murder in July 1991.
The fugitive, described by Interpol as “dangerous,” escaped into police custody.
He belonged then to the Perna Pranno clan, the most important in the city of Cosenza where he lived.
“He is considered to be partly responsible for the ambush of January 5, 1991 that cost the lives of the brothers Stefano and Giuseppe B., who wanted more autonomy and consideration among the clans of Cosenza,” says a press release from the Italian Carabinieri. .
The victims, according to the same source, “had been killed with iron bars in a fish camp (…) and their bodies disappeared and were never foundx.