MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Italy demands Uruguay to explain how “Milan's cocaine king” escaped from a jail in police HQ

Rocco Morabito who was on the list of the ten most wanted criminals in the world, fled on Sunday midnight from Montevideo's police headquarters

Italy' Home Secretary Matteo Salvini called on Monday the Uruguayan government asking to explain how one of the most wanted criminals in the world, known as Milan's cocaine king, managed to escape from a jail in Montevideo where he was waiting for his extradition to Italy.

Matteo Salvini promised that mafia chief Rocco Morabito, who was captured in Uruguay in 2017, after years on the run, “will be hunted down until we capture him, wherever he may be hiding”.

The capo di cappi Rocco Morabito who was on the list of the ten most wanted criminals in the world, fled on Sunday midnight from Montevideo's police headquarters, together with three other fugitives waiting to be extradited, two to Brazil and one to Argentina.

“It is disconcerting and serious that a criminal like Rocco Morabito, boss of the ‘Ndrangheta (Calabria mafia and one of Italy's most powerful), managed to escape from a jail in Uruguay while he was waiting to be extradited to Italy,” Salvini said.

“I make two commitments, First: to shed light on evasion procedures, asking for immediate explanations from the Montevideo government. Second: we will continue to hunt down Morabito, wherever he is, to throw him in jail as he deserves.”

Rocco Morabito, 52, was on the run from the Italian Justice since 1995. Dubbed the “cocaine king of Milan,” he was convicted to thirty years in jail for mafia association, drug trafficking and other serious crimes.

The Uruguayan justice had agreed to Morabito's extradition to Italy and he was under “administrative” arrest waiting for the latest paperwork to send him back to Rome.

In Uruguay he was living since 2002 in a ten bedroom residence in the international Atlantic seaside resort, which he rented for US$ 10.000 a month and paid in advance. Mere neighbor coincidence Morabito was living a couple of blocks away from another cocaine king, but Mexican, who was in effect finally extradited not so long ago.

Apparently the alarms went on when Morabito tried to register his daughter in a local school with her real name and later he was involved in an incident with his wife in a Montevideo hotel.

The details of the escape are still not entirely clear, but apparently the four bored a hole in the wall of the jail which is located in the last floor of police HQ and them jumped into the balcony of a neighboring flat. The lady was in bed but not sleeping and the criminals asked for the keys of the flat and front door, plus Uruguayan money.

“It was almost Sunday midnight and they didn't spend more than ten minutes at the flat”, said the lady.

This happened at midnight Sunday but the absence of the four was only discovered at 07:00 in the morning when the routine breakfast watch. This despite the fact that the lady of the flat declared on the television news that after the four intruders had left, she immediately went to the police HQ to report what had happened.

The last floor jail at the police HQ in Montevideo has a long record or escapes, some petty thieves or drug dealers but also a few years ago, a notorious Israeli narcotics chief, who tried twice to escape. The first time dressed as a woman cop, but he was unlucky, a woman policewoman was on duty and the strange walking lady did not convince her. The second time, successful, allegedly in one of the garbage dumps. Following on an investigation, several top police officers were sacked.