An Italian mafia boss known as the “cocaine king of Milan” escaped from prison in Uruguay where he was awaiting extradition to Italy.
Rocco Morabito, 53, leader of Italy’s most powerful organised crime group – the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta – fled the prison in Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo, through a hole in the roof of the building on Sunday 23rd June.
Three other prisoners awaiting extradition to Brazil and Argentina – including one on charges of homicide – escaped with Morabito. The four men let themselves down by rope into an adjacent home, where they robbed the owner, the ministry added.
Morabito, who had been on the run for 23 years, was arrested in September 2017 at a luxury hotel in Montevideo, along with his wife, reportedly an Angolan national.
The mobster, who was sentenced in absentia to 30 years in prison in Italy, had been sought by police since 1994 after attempting to import almost a tonne of cocaine, worth 13bn lire ($7.64m), into Italy from Brazil.
Uruguay’s interior ministry announced on Wednesday 26th June that one of the four prisoners who escaped Sunday night from the Carcel Central in the capital, Montevideo, had been recaptured.
Acting on an anonymous tip-off, police said they searched for 59-year-old Leonardo Abel Sinopoli Azcoaga in the northern border town of Salto, 492 kilometres (305 miles) inland from the capital. He was trying to find a ride to take him over the border into Brazil. Offers to pay for the drive had aroused suspicions, and Sinopoli was picked up by police at a shopping mall and bus station, carrying only a mobile phone.
Sinopoli had escaped from a Brazilian jail in 2001, also when he was also about to be extradited.
However, Morabito, the main target of the police operation remained at large as of Wednesday 26th June.
