Mafia fugitive held

Police captured one of Sicily’s top Mafia fugitives yesterday, dealing a blow to the island’s Cosa Nostra crime syndicate.

Convicted mobster Domenico Raccuglia, who has been on the run for 15 years, now faces several life sentences for crimes including the murder of a rival’s nine-year-old son, whose body was thrown into a vat of acid.

Italian interior minister Roberto Maroni described Raccuglia as Cosa Nostra’s No 2, and hailed his arrest as delivering “one of the hardest blows” to the Sicilian Mafia in the last few years.