Italy asks France to extradite suspected Mafia killer

Italy has asked France to hand over a convicted killer and suspected member of a powerful mafia organisation captured after 16 years on the run, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Edgardo Greco, 63, is suspected of belonging to the notorious 'Ndrangheta, a powerful mafia organisation based in Calabria, southern Italy.

He was arrested in the French city of Saint-Etienne, where he had at one point run an Italian restaurant under an alias, according to French prosecutors.

He is wanted in Italy to serve a life sentence for the murders of Stefano and Giuseppe Bartolomeo, according to Interpol, which reported last month's arrest.

He is also accused of the attempted murder of Emiliano Mosciaro "as part of a mafia war between the Pino Sena and Perna Pranno gangs that marked the early 1990s".

Greco's lawyer, Benoit Courtin, told AFP that Italy had filed its extradition request with the appeals court in the southeastern city of Lyon.

In Saint-Etienne, Greco became in June 2021 the owner of an Italian restaurant called Caffe Rossini Ristorante, running it until November 2021, French prosecutors said.

According to documents seen by AFP, he used the name Paolo Dimitrio and also worked in other Italian restaurants in the city.

Greco also worked evenings in a pizza restaurant under his assumed name, according to Italian media.

His arrest came a week after Italian police said they had dismantled a 'Ndrangheta mafia ring dominating a large area of southern Calabria and seized assets exceeding 250 million euros ($270 million).

Fifty-six people, many already in prison, were put under criminal investigation for a series of crimes including mafia-related conspiracy, extortion, kidnapping, bribery and possession of weapons, police and prosecutors said.

His arrest also came just over two weeks after Italian police arrested one of the most notorious bosses of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra mafia, Matteo Messina Denaro, who had been on the run for 30 years.

The 60-year-old was arrested after visiting a health clinic where he was being treated in the Sicilian capital Palermo.