Italian police arrest henchmen of fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro

Baku. 4 August. REPORT.AZ/ Italian police have arrested 11 suspects linked to the fugitive head of the Sicilian Mafia, including a former boss who ran a secret message system for the mobster using a sheep-based code, Report informs citing foreign media. 

Matteo Messina Denaro, 53, who has been on the run since 1993, used a farm in Mazara del Vallo to communicate with his henchmen via the age-old method of "pizzini", bits of paper containing messages often written in cipher, police said.

Among those arrested was former boss Vito Gondola, whose job it was to call the clan members to alert them to each new message, which was placed under a rock in a field at the farm and often destroyed on the spot after reading.

"I've put the ricotta cheese aside for you, will you come by later?" he would say on the telephone - a phrase investigators said had nothing to do with dairy products.