Police may be closing in on Italy's most wanted mafia boss, Messina Denaro

Police may be closing in on Italy's most wanted mafia boss, Messina Denaro. Denaro's brother, Salvatore Denaro was arrested on Monday in an operation involving 200 officers.He was detained along with 18 others who authorities say are members of a network surrounding the "boss of bosses" of the Cosa Nostra, who has been on the run since 1993. The prisoners face charges of organizing godfather Messina Denaro's secret correspondence to help him escape arrest. Head of Police in Trapani, Giuseppe Linares says the accused had a complex system in place to avoid police infiltration. "The group (in charge to help him) had reduced contacts among themselves to a minimum, just to maybe one or two occasions every year. They communicated only by means of pieces of paper ('pizzini') and they only used very trusted people, mostly from within the family." Like previous fugitive godfathers, Messina Denaro reportedly controls the mob by sending secret "pizzini", messages typed on tiny pieces of onionskin paper and hidden between the messenger's toes — these are used to communicate between Mafia lieutenants. Messina Denaro has a playboy image. Nicknamed "Diabolik" after a comic-book character, the mobster was sentenced to life in absentia for his part in a 1993 Mafia bombing campaign which left 10 people dead and more than 90 injured.