Italy Arrests Top Mafia Boss

Italy's reputed No. 1 Mafia boss was arrested Tuesday at a farmhouse in the Sicilian countryside after frustrating investigators' efforts to catch him during more than 40 years on the run, the Interior Ministry said.

Bernardo Provenzano, Italy's most wanted man, is believed to have taken over the Sicilian Mafia after the 1993 arrest of former boss Salvatore "Toto" Riina in Palermo.

"Bastard! Murderer!" a crowd shouted as black-hooded policemen took the elderly man out of a sedan and rushed him into the courtyard of a police building in Palermo. The gray-haired Provenzano, wearing a windbreaker and tinted glasses, glanced aside at one point but made no audible comment.

A Palermo police spokesman, Agent Daniele Macaluso, said Provenzano had been arrested in the morning near Corleone, the Sicilian town made famous in the "Godfather" movies. He was then driven to Palermo, 37 miles north of Corleone.

He was being questioned by anti-Mafia prosecutors in police offices, but was saying little, answering only questions about his identity, the Italian news agency ANSA reported from Palermo.

Interior Ministry Undersecretary Alfredo Mantovano described Provenzano as "the most important person from Cosa Nostra" after Riina, the so-called "boss of bosses" — who was also arrested after years as a fugitive. He called the arrest "an important step forward ... for the entire nation."

Prosecutors describe Provenzano as a man who helped Cosa Nostra increasingly spread its tentacles into the lucrative world of public works contracts in Sicily, turning the Mafia into more of a white-collar industry of illegal activity less dependent on traditional revenue-making operations like drug trafficking and extortion rackets.

Provenzano, on the run since 1963, has proven an elusive target.

Turncoats have told investigators in recent years that he avoided capture for so long by sleeping in different farmhouses across the island every few nights and by giving orders with handwritten notes, not trusting cell phone conversations for fear that they are monitored by police.

Authorities were also hampered in their hunt for him because their last photo of Provenzano dated back nearly 50 years. However, personnel at a clinic in southern France where Provenzano is believed to have been treated for prostate problems under a false name a few years ago helped police to create a new composite sketch.

Italy's top anti-Mafia prosecutor, Piero Grasso, who for years as Palermo's chief prosecutor had personally led the hunt for Provenzano, said on RAI radio that he felt "great satisfaction, great emotion" at the arrest.

As recently as last month, Provenzano's former lawyer was quoted as telling an Italian newspaper that he was dead.

"I think he's dead, and has been dead for several years," Salvatore Traina was quoted as telling the Rome-based daily La Repubblica. "They have looked for him everywhere, they have looked intensely for years but they can't find him. This must mean something."

In fact, reports CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey, Provenzano was being protected by the infamous code of omerta, or silence — and an even more powerful factor: fear.

The Hollywood image of a mafia don may be of a man who inspires loyalty by protecting his people. But the reality, says Pizzey, is far more brutal: A horrific bomb blast that killed two leading anti-Mafia prosecutors were attributed to Provenzano.

Former Palermo Mayor Leoluca Orlando praised police and prosecutors. News of the arrest prompted similar praise from many politicians, including President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

Pizzey says Italian authorities claim they found Provenzano's hideout the old-fashioned way, through police work, but did not explain why it took so long.