"When I notified him of the arrest, he gave his personal details and then fell silent. Only when we pointed out that it was the night of San Graziano did he comment in Sardinian: 'It means that the lucky star is no longer there. You were good.'"
Lieutenant Colonel Giorgio Mazzoli, commander of the Cagliari anti-crime unit of the Ros, is the officer who arrested Graziano Messina in a house in Desulo in the early hours of December 18, 2021. That last fugitive period had begun on July 2 of the previous year, while the Court of Cassation made the 24-year sentence for drug trafficking definitive. When he recalls that "complex activity carried out by a complex team, given that the Cagliari Ros had the support of the central departments of the special operational grouping of Rome, of the Gis and of the territorial Arma", even more than the investigative difficulties, Mazzoli is reminded of the resources that Messina knew how to draw from the reservoir of the symbolic, from the deposit of a subculture that is hard to die.
What was his strength?
"Over the years he had managed to build an aura that had taken hold in the collective imagination. And at least in some sectors of the Barbagia population he enjoyed strong consensus that translated into a very strict code of silence: in that year and a half of hiding there was no one who let slip even a single confidence. And let's think of the ease with which he was able to move, changing hiding places and guests between Goceano and Barbagia. Those who supported him were shepherds but also citizens not directly linked to the agricultural and pastoral environment: this means that his figure still inspired fear but also respect, let's call it that. His goal was money and to obtain it he committed a variety of crimes that reached drug trafficking, but when one insists on speaking of a "romantic bandit" the adjective always ends up sweeping away the noun. And he, also thanks to the mass media and a certain type of culture of the exotic, managed to build this aura. He was an influencer ante litteram and took advantage of this by building a network of transversal supports".
