Bogota - SPA
Colombian authorities said Saturday they had
scored a major coup with the arrest of an Italian drug lord
associated with the \'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia, according to dpa.
In a statement, the Colombian Interior Ministry described Roberto
Pannunzi as \"the Italian Pablo Escobar,\" and said he was the head of
a ring that was smuggling tonnes of cocaine from South America to
Europe.
\"There were four international arrest warrants for drug smuggling
and criminal association with the mafia for this international drug
lord. Italy had issued a red notice alert for him,\" the ministry
said.
Italian media said Pannunzi had been on the run since 2010, when
he escaped from a clinic in Rome where he had been taken for a heart
condition. He was arrested by special forces in Bogota, where police
found him with false documents.
\"I think he was the biggest supplier of drugs from Colombia,\"
Federico Cafiero de Raho, a prosecutor from Reggio Calabria, told the
Italian news agency Adnkronos, adding that Italian authorities
contributed to the arrest of Pannunzi.