Top Italian Mafia boss escapes from hospital detention
File photo.
Image by: STRINGER/MEXICO / REUTERS
Image by: STRINGER/MEXICO / REUTERS
A top Italian mafia boss serving a 13-year jail sentence has escaped from a hospital where he was recently admitted for treatment, officials said Thursday.
The 49-year-old Antonio Pelle disappeared on Wednesday from the hospital in Locri, a town in Italy's southern Calabria region.
Pelle is leading member of the Pelle-Vottari crime family of the Calabrian mafia, the 'Ndrangheta.
On grounds of poor health, Pelle has been serving his sentence under house arrest. He had been hospitalised earlier this week after taking ill.
A longstanding bloody feud between the Pelle-Vottari and a rival clan, the Nirta-Strangio, culminated in a 2007 shooting of six people in Duisburg, Germany.
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