Mafia boss who escaped prison using bed sheets one year ago recaptured | World News

A ‘dangerous’ mafia boss who managed to escape from a high-security prison in Italy using tied together bed sheets has been recaptured by police in France.

Marco Raduano, who is on Europol’s list of most wanted criminals, was caught in Bastia on the French island of Corsica today, authorities say.

The 40-year-old mobster is a leading figure in a notorious Apulia-based Sacra Corona Unita mafia, recently renamed the Società Foggiana.

He had pulled off an audacious escape in February last year when he managed to break free from the Badu’e Carros jail in Nuoro, Sardinia.

CCTV footage of Raduano’s dramatic escape showed the mafioso using a rope of knotted bed linen to scale down the walls before jumping several metres onto grassland below. 

Raduano, who is from the town of Vieste in Italy, then sprinted down the road and evaded capture for 12 months – until now. 

His right-hand man, Italian Gianluigi Troiano, was also detained in Otura near Granada in Spain, according to  the Italian interior minister Matteo Piantedosi, who described it as ‘another significant blow to organised crime’.

At the time of his escape a year ago, Raduano had been in prison for five years after being arrested as part of a large-scale drug and arms trafficking sting.

The head of the Gargano clan, which operates within the ‘fifth mafia’ in Foggia in the Puglia region of southern Italy, was serving a 24-year sentence.

Europol said Raduano was the top figure in the group and was a ruthless killer involved in drug trafficking and extortion.

In recent years, investigators have made inroads into exposing the criminal organisation.

It comes as part of concerted efforts against other mafia groups including the Cosa Nostra in Sicily, the ’Ndrangheta in Calabria and the Camorra in Naples.

The Società Foggiana had previously been operating largely under the radar.

According to prosecutors,the group is characterised by a high degree of aggression and violence.

Authorities said: ‘It’s one that feeds cadavers to pigs so as not to leave a trace. An unrefined mafia in its actions and, for this reason, dangerous.’

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