Pic: Europol

The story of the arrest (or alleged arrest) of the boss of the Italian mafia in The Hague, last Wednesday, took on the tones of yellow: the man that the arrestatie team - the nocs of the Dutch police - took from a restaurant in the third Dutch city blindfolded and then thrown into the fort of the Dutch prisons, Vught, is Matteo Messina Denaro?

According to the lawyer of the man in prison, definitely not: “if my client is Messina Denaro, I am the Pope”, he would have told the Dutch press.

This story shows several dark sides that at the moment it is not possible to clarify because public information is scarce.

In the meantime, it is worthwhile to understand who made the name of Messina Denaro first. The Amsterdam daily Het Parool, one of the main Dutch newspapers, was the first to publish the news, at 1 pm on 10 September : despite the conditional sentence, the newspaper's portal said in the article that the OM, the prosecutor who ordered the raid in the restaurant, he would have mentioned the name of Messina Denaro because the operation would have been the execution of an arrest warrant issued by Italy.

The article is written by Wouter Laumans, one of the greatest Mafia experts in the Netherlands, author of Mocro Maffia and Maffia Paradijs, the latter a book dedicated to the Italian criminal presence in the Netherlands.

The sources therefore enjoy the highest level of reputation and if the operation had really started with a request from Italy it is very likely that the investigators in our country had accurate information.

The news was then picked up by NOS, the state TV portal in the Netherlands, while in Italy no national media covered the matter.

In short, the question awaiting an answer is the following: what information did the Italian and Dutch investigators have in hand for having decided to raid the Den Haag restaurant?

Had the Anti-Mafia Investigation Department therefore picked up any signs that could suggest Messina Denaro's presence in the Netherlands?

The arrest would have taken place on Wednesday and if the circumstance of the mistaken identity were confirmed , it would remain to wonder how it was possible, for the highest investigative ranks of the two countries, to make such a mistake.