France arrests suspected Italian mafia killer after 16 years on run: Interpol

SAINT-ETIENNE, FRANCE – A convicted Italian killer, believed to belong to one of the country’s most powerful mafia organisations, was arrested on Thursday in France after 16 years on the run, Interpol said.

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

Interpol said 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, said Interpol.

He is also accused there 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”.

The Bartolomeo brothers were beaten to death with iron bars in a fish warehouse, Italian police said.

In Saint-Etienne, Greco in June 2021 became 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.

A still-open Facebook account for the Caffe Rossini Ristorante, which now appears to have been closed down, shows local press covered its opening in 2021.

“Paolo Dimitrio opens the restaurant of his dreams,” said the headline in the article in the local Le Progres newspaper.

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

After his arrest in the early hours of the morning, he appeared before an investigating magistrate in Lyon who formally notified him of Italy’s arrest warrant, prosecutors said.

He was then placed in detention.