POLICE RELIEF AS DRUGS BARON IS REARRESTED

ITALY'S institutions, and especially its police, yesterday gloated over the
re-arrest of Pasquale Cuntrera, the Mafia drugs baron whose disappearance
in a wheelchair triggered a political storm last week.

Cuntrera, 63, was caught with his wife by Italian and local agents near
Malaga in Spain, 18 days after vanishing from Italy. He disappeared after
walking free on a technicality from Parma prison, days before a supreme
court decision to uphold his 21-year sentence.

News of his release on May 6 was faxed to Sicilian magistrates, who should
have ordered his re-arrest pending the imminent court decision. But for
five days the fax sat unseen on someone's desk. When it was finally
noticed, Cuntrera, dubbed European's number one drugs boss, had already
fled Italy.

"A wound has been healed," Giorggio Napolitano, the Interior Minister, said
with relief at the news that Cuntrera and his wife had been picked up on
Sunday as they strolled near Torremolinos.

As police and Mr Napolitano's government colleagues celebrated the victory,
it emerged that Italian police had identified and trailed Cuntrera and his
wife after their mobile telephones had betrayed their whereabouts.

The telephones were first identified after they had been called from other
Italian numbers, which had been contacted from a call box outside Parma
prison, the day Cuntrera was released.

Despite his "paralysis" allegedly suffered in prison in Italy, where he and
his brothers Paolo and Gaspare were confined after being extradited from
Venezuela in 1992, Cuntrera had abandoned his wheelchair, and was walking
with a stick when stopped. Asked for his documents, he said in fluent
Spanish: "We've left them at the hotel. We're tourists."

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski