World Notes Italy

They came for him just after dawn. As 400 paramilitary carabinieri surrounded the Caccamo, Sicily, farmhouse and two helicopters hovered overhead, police burst through the door. Inside, they found two men. One of them produced documents saying he was Giuseppe di Fresco. His captors knew better. The man's identity: Michele Greco, also known as ll Papa, the pope of the Sicilian Mafia. "Yes, I am Greco," he is said to have admitted after several hours of interrogation. "You are behaving like gentlemen, and I don't want to waste your time."

Italian police say Greco is the chief of the commission that oversees all Mafia operations in Sicily, including the lucrative heroin trade to the U.S. Until last week he was one of the 112 in absentia defendants in the mammoth Mafia trial now going on in Palermo. He is charged, among other things, with having ordered 90 murders, including the 1982 slaying of General Alberto Dalla Chiesa, the former prefect of Palermo. Greco, who has been in hiding since 1982, is already under a life sentence for ordering the 1983 murder of a Palermo magistrate. His capture represents yet another sharp blow to the Mafia's image of invincibility.