The last hideout of one of Italy’s most notorious mafia kingpins has been transformed into a new police headquarters in a highly symbolic move the government says is a humiliation for the country’s criminal underworld.

More than two decades after Salvatore “Totò” Riina was arrested in the Sicilian capital, Palermo, police opened new offices in a villa that once housed one of Italy’s most-wanted fugitives, nicknamed “the Beast”.



Salvatore Riina was believed to have directed the mob’s international drug trade and suspected in the assassination of two leading prosecutors. Photograph: Labruzzo/AP

Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Italy’s interior minister, Angelino Alfano, said the move had strong symbolism for the fight against the mafia. “We are stronger than the mafia and today we are proving that.

“Members of the mafia are not only killers but there are also thieves of the future, robbers of hope and of the beautiful words in our vocabulary such as ‘honour’, ‘family’ and ‘respect’,” he said.

“The fact that Riina’s home becomes the home of the police is an extraordinary sign. In mafia symbolism it’s the biggest humiliation that they could be subjected to,” Alfano added.

A plaque outside the building dedicates the new police station to Mario Trapassi and Salvatore Bartolotta, officers killed in the 1983 mafia assassination of judge Rocco Chinnici.

Riina himself was arrested a decade later, on 15 January 1993, after 23 years as a fugitive. As boss of the Sicilian mafia, Cosa Nostra, he presided over a violent uprising against the Italian state. Now he is languishing in a jail cell under a harsh prison regime reserved for Italy’s most dangerous criminals.

While Alfano said reclaiming Riina’s home demonstrated the “extraordinary success” of the Italian agency for seized assets, set up in 2010, the villa has also been seen as a sign of past government failures.

John Dickie, professor of Italian studies at University College London and author of Mafia Republic: Italy’s Criminal Curse, said controversy still surrounded the building.

“For some reason it was left unguarded and Riina’s people got in, removed all the documentation that he had left there and even redecorated. That episode is one of the bits of information that people put together to say that there was some kind of deal with other members of the mafia to shop Riina.

“No file has yet got to the bottom of this; that’s the interesting mystery surrounding the house,” he said.

A trial is under way in Palermo that seeks to determine whether Riina and other mafia members negotiated with the Italian government to bring about an end to Cosa Nostra’s bombing campaign in the early 1990s. The case has reached into the highest realms of power, with Italy’s former president Giorgio Napolitano called to testify last year.

Riina has been observing the proceedings from behind bars and has been recorded calling for the presiding magistrates to be killed.