Italian mafia fugitive arrested in Colombia after 4 years on the run is seen visiting Pablo Escobar's grave
Italian police announced on Friday the arrest in Colombia of a dangerous fugitive accused of being the intermediary between the Latin American country's drug cartels and the Naples mafia.
Luigi Belvedere has been sentenced to almost 19 years in jail for international drug trafficking but has been on the run since December 2020.
He was captured in the Colombian city of Medellin overnight.
In announcing his arrest, Italian police released a photo of Belvedere visiting the grave of Pablo Escobar, the founder and boss of the Medellin cartel, who was killed by police in 1993.
Belvedere, a broker from Caserta, north of Naples, "specialized in the illegal importation of cocaine (and) acted as an intermediary between Colombia cartels and some of the clans of the Casalesi," the Italian interior ministry said in a statement,
The Casalesi are a notorious branch of the Camorra mafia. Naples has been the traditional base for the mafia-type Camorra syndicate, an umbrella for many different clans.
Investigators located him in Columbia, where they said he was "active in the organization of drug shipments from South America to Europe," in part because of his use of a "well-known messaging system," police said.
Belvedere, believed to be around 32 years old and who was on the Italian interior ministry's list of dangerous fugitives, was tracked down with the support of Columbian investigators and European Union policing body Europol.
The arrest comes about three months after a Norwegian man accused of leading a crime ring that trafficked cocaine from South America to Europe on sailboats was captured in Colombia. Pazooki Farhad — dubbed "The Profesor" — was detained at El Dorado airport, while his alleged right-hand man and fellow Norwegian Bernsten Bjarte was captured in the Caribbean coastal city of Barranquilla, police said.