Mobster captured after 17 years cheered by public

A VETERAN mobster was arrested after 17 years on the run, but a sympathetic crowd cheered him yesterday as he was escorted out of a police barracks and taken to jail.

Giovanni Tegano, a member of the ’ndrangheta organised crime group, was on the list of Italy’s top 30 most wanted fugitives. Officials described the 70-year-old as a notorious figure in the crime-ridden area and hailed his arrest as a tough blow to the ’ndrangheta, which is based in the poor region of Calabria.

Police cordoned off the cheering crowd of scores of people as Tegano was leaving the police headquarters in Reggio Calabria, southern Italy, yesterday. “Giovanni is a man of peace!” one woman shouted.

“Given his role, seniority and the importance of events he knew, he had risen to the ranks of one of the ’ndrangheta’s most important figures,” said top police official Renato Cortese. Tegano’s years in hiding added to his charisma in the eyes of fellow mobsters, he said.

The ’ndrangheta, linked to crime around the world, is considered more powerful than the Sicilian Mafia.

Tegano is regarded as one of the few remaining mobsters of the ’ndrangheta’s old guard.

He was implicated in a turf war in the mid-1980s that left scores dead, and for that he has been convicted to life in jail.

Officials said the mobster was apprehended on Monday evening in a house on the hills surrounding Reggio Calabria, the regional capital.

Tegano did not resist arrest, though he had a loaded gun with him, Cortese said.