Italian police announced Friday the arrest in Colombia of a dangerous fugitive accused of being the intermediary between the drug cartels of this Latin American country and the Naples mafia.
Luigi Belvedere was sentenced to nearly 19 years in prison for international drug trafficking but has been on the run since December 2020.
He was captured at night in the Colombian city of Medellin.
In announcing his arrest, Italian police released a photo of Belvedere visiting the grave of Pablo Escobar, the founder and boss of the Medellín cartel, killed by police in 1993.
State Police
Belvedere, a broker from Caserta, north of Naples, “specialized in the illegal importation of cocaine (and) served as an intermediary between Colombian cartels and certain Casalesi clans,” the Italian Interior Ministry said in a statement. press release.
The Casalesi are a notorious branch of the Camorra Mafia. Naples is the traditional base of the Camorra mafia syndicate, which brings together many different clans.
Investigators located him in Colombia, where they said he was “active in organizing drug shipments from South America to Europe”, in part through his use of a “system well-known messaging service,” police said.
Belvedere, aged around 32 and on the Italian Interior Ministry’s list of dangerous fugitives, was found with the support of Colombian investigators and the European Union police body Europol.
The arrest comes about three months after a Norwegian man accused of running a criminal network smuggling cocaine from South America to Europe on sailboats was arrested. captured in Colombia. Pazooki Farhad – nicknamed “The Professor” – was arrested at El Dorado airport, while his alleged right-hand man and fellow Norwegian Bernsten Bjarte was captured in the Caribbean coastal city of Barranquilla, police said.
