ROME – Marco Raduano, a Gargano mafia boss escaped from the Bedu ‘e Carros 'maximum security' penitentiary in Sardinia, by acquiring a set of keys to unlock his cell and make his way out of the prison, red-faced investigators said Wednesday.

  Following his escape on Friday, two investigations began that revealed that Raduano used the stolen keys to escape from the prison’s boundary wall, first using a rope of knotted bed sheets to lower himself from the building. A manhunt has begun throughout the city of Nuoro and in the ports and airports of Sardinia to recapture him.

 “A fugue of this kind is carefully prepared,” said the Deputy Minister of Justice, Francesco Paolo Sisto, to TeleNorba. “You don't flee alone, it seems clear to me. Whether fellow inmates or others helped him. It remains a disturbing episode, especially in that type of prison. It cannot leave us indifferent, due to the seriousness of what happened and the dangerousness of the escaped person.”  

 The 39-year-old prisoner was first arrested in 2018. He was sentenced until 2046 for various mafia-related crimes, including drug trafficking, murder, and crimes against the person, against property, and in the field of weapons and drugs.

 Raduano was under high security 3, but due to budget cuts, there were only 50 guards watching the 180 prisoners at Bedu ‘e Carros when Raduano made his escape.

 Giovanni Conteddu of Osapp Nuoro, the city’s trade union organization of the penitentiary police, said that the lack of personnel at the prison had been “denounced” for years.

 “Sooner or later, it had to happen, the prison is full of surveillance failures,” said Conteddu.

 “In the high security department where there are about 30 inmates belonging to organized crime from Puglia, Calabria, Campania and Sicily, there is only one guard officer, and in the room where the keys and control cameras are kept, there is nobody, the place is discovered. This is the first leak that proved to be decisive for Raduano's escape.”

 jp-jd