Overview
- Spanish UDYCO agents detained Domenico Paviglianiti as he left a restaurant in Soria on Friday, June 26, after establishing a targeted operation around his suspected hideout.
- Police say the arrest followed months of wiretaps and close monitoring carried out with the Guardia di Finanza of Reggio Calabria and Interpol under the ICAN cooperation framework.
- Paviglianiti is held on a European Arrest Warrant for drug trafficking, crimes against persons, and money laundering, and Italian authorities have long-running convictions and pending years of sentence to enforce.
- His capture closes a pattern of prior detentions and legal escapes: he was arrested in Spain in 1996 and 2021, extradited to Italy in 1999, freed early after a sentencing calculation error, and then went into hiding.
- The arrest removes a high-value fugitive linked by investigators to large-scale narcotics networks and numerous killings and sets the stage for extradition while highlighting cross-border gaps that police aim to fix.