SENIOR Italian government figures and Mafia investigators alike expressed their satisfaction yesterday at the capture, late on Monday night, of the "godfather" Mr Giovanni Brusca.
A former magistrate and Mafia expert, Mr Luciano Violante, summed up the widespread satisfaction of Italy's three day old centre left government, saying: "One has to be very careful, but the arrest of Giovanni Brusca proves that we can definitively defeat the Mafia."
Mr Brusca (36), widely believed to be the undisputed boss of Cosa Nostra in Sicily, following the arrest of "Toto" Riina in 1993 and that of Mr Leoluca Bagarella last year, stands accused of involvement in the May 1992 killing of a leading Mafia investigator, Mr Giovanni Falcone.
Testimony from mafiosi turned state's witness points to him as the person behind the bomb attack in which Mr Falcone, his wife, and three bodyguards were killed.
He is also accused of other murders, including that of 11 year old Giuseppe Di Matteo, son of a mafioso turned state's witness, whom he allegedly strangled before dumping his body in an acid vat.
Thanks to painstaking investigative work based almost entirely on phone taps, Mr Brusca was eventually traced to a hideaway in a summer seaside house outside Agrigento in Sicily. Thirty heavily armed policemen raided the house, arresting him, his brother Vincenzo and a mafia soldier", Mr Domenico Blanco, as they were watching television.
Coincidentally, a film recounting the killing of Judge Falcone was being broadcast at the very moment of the arrest.
The capture of Mr Brusca may prove doubly significant. Not only is he the current number one Mafia boss, but he is also believed to have been one of the main instigators of untypical, terrorist style Mafia actions such as the 1993 bombing of the celebrated Uffizzi gallery in Florence and of the Vicariato in San Giovanni, Rome. Mafia experts such as Palermo's senior investigator Mr Giancarlo Caselli were quick, however, to point out yesterday that while Mr Biusca's arrest might curtail a particular style of Mafia action, it would certainly not in itself eradicate a phenomenon well entrenched in Italian society.
"One must not forget a fundamental fact when talking about the Mafia," said Mr Caselli. "It is above all an organisation capable of replacing its captured bosses, able to heal its wounds and repair its damaged structures."