MAFIA BOSS ENDS 23 YEARS AT LARGE

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 16, 1993                   TAG: 9301160071
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: ROME                                LENGTH: Short
MAFIA BOSS ENDS 23 YEARS AT LARGE
Salvatore Riina, the merciless and elusive Mafia leader who tyrannized the underworld of organized crime in Italy, surrendered meekly to police in Sicily on Friday after more than two decades as one of the world's most wanted fugitives.
"You got the wrong guy," Riina blustered to the young "carabinieri" who ambushed his car in the morning rush hour on Via Leonardo da Vinci, a busy street in the Sicilian capital of Palermo.
Riina carried false documents and an aged, jowly face that nobody on the right side of the law had seen since 1969. But the 35-member special operations team from Italy's national paramilitary police had the right guy: the "capo di tutti i capi," the boss of bosses of the Cosa Nostra.
Riina went quietly.
It was the most important arrest in Italy's fight against the Mafia, and it took a nation's breath away.
"Those who were afraid now know that the monster is not invincible," said national police chief Vincenzo Parisi.
Riina, 62, was the most wanted man in Italy, and near the top of Interpol's list of the world's 10 most dangerous criminals.
From hiding, Riina waged a ruthless crusade against enemies and ambitious allies alike in a bloody passage known to police as the "Third War of the Mafia." Victory took Toto Riina, as he is universally known in Italy, to power around 1981 as overall boss of the Cosa Nostra.
In 1987, he was convicted in absentia of a series of Mafia murders and sentenced to life imprisonment.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB