Italian police announced Friday the arrest in Colombia of a dangerous fugitive accused of being an intermediary between Latin American countries. drug cartels and the Naples Mafia.

Luigi Belvedere was sentenced to almost 19 years in prison for international drug trafficking, but has been on the run since December 2020.

He was captured in the Colombian city of Medellin overnight.

In announcing his arrest, Italian police released a photo de Belvedere visiting his grave Pablo Escobar, the founder and head of the Medellin cartel, who was killed by the police in 1993.

Belvedere, a broker in Caserta, north of Naples, “specialized in the illegal importation of cocaine (and) acted as an intermediary between Colombian cartels and some of the Casalesi clans,” the Italian Interior Ministry said in a statement. statement,

The Casalesi are a notorious branch of the Camorra mafia. Naples was the traditional base for the mafia-type Camorra syndicate, an umbrella for many different clans.

Investigators found him in Colombia, where they said he was “active in organizing drug shipments from South America to Europe,” in part because of his use of a “well-known messaging system,” police said.

Belvedere, believed to be around 32 years old and on the Italian Interior Ministry’s list of dangerous fugitives, was tracked down with the help of Colombian investigators and the European Union’s police body Europol.

The arrest comes about three months after a Norwegian accused of running a criminal trafficking ring cocaine from South America to Europe on sailboats was captured in Colombia. Pazooki Farhad — dubbed “The Professor” — was detained at El Dorado airport, while his alleged right-hand man and fellow Norwegian Bernsten Bjarte was captured in the Caribbean coastal city of Barranquilla, police said.