THE Sicilian Mafia suffered a stunning blow yesterday when its elusive and near-legendary “boss of bosses” was captured after more than 40 years on the run. Bernardo Provenzano, 73, known variously as the Phantom of Corleone, the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Tractor, was arrested at a farmhouse in countryside near Corleone, his birthplace and the Mafia stronghold in Sicily, which gave its name to the Mafia family in the celebrated Godfather films. It was the most dramatic coup against Cosa Nostra since the crackdown of the early 1990s.

Italy’s most-wanted man was captured without resistance after being on the run since 1963 and flown to Palermo, the Sicilian capital, by helicopter. A crowd shouted “Bastard! Murderer!” at him as black-hooded anti-Mafia police led him from a car and rushed him into the courtyard of a police building in the city, where he was placed in a highsecurity cell.

Provenzano, grey-haired and wearing a windcheater and tinted glasses, glanced sideways at one point but made no audible comment. It was reported that he was being questioned by anti-Mafia prosecutors but was saying little, answering only questions about his identity.

The news overshadowed even Italy’s close election race on television news bulletins. Provenzano had eluded capture for so long that some wondered whether he even existed.

Yet the timing of his arrest, despite denials to the contrary, may be no coincidence, coming as it did on the day that power appeared to be slipping from the fingers of Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, whose party is said to have had close connections with the country’s powerful and influential underworld. His opponent, Romano Prodi, won the election by a whisker on an anti-Mafia ticket.

Last month Salvatore Traina, Provenzano’s former lawyer, suggested that his client had been dead for years because “they have looked for him intensely for years but can’t find him”. Until yesterday, the only known photograph of him dated from 1959, when he was wanted on charges of murder and armed robbery. He has been sentenced to life imprisonment in his absence. Police have repeatedly updated photofit images of him but to no avail. It has long been assumed in Sicily that he was still in or near Corleone, where his wife and daughter live. His son is studying in Germany.

After his arrest, police experts confirmed Provenzano’s identity by a DNA test. Two years ago the police found out that Provenzano had secretly undergone prostate surgery at a Marseilles clinic under a false name, and although too late to capture him, obtained DNA samples from doctors.

When arrested Provenzano was wearing a pullover and jeans. He put up no resistance and remained silent, the police said. They said that he had survived for so long by relying on a code of fear and a network of loyal followers, moving from one safe house to another. He communicated with Mafia bosses through written instructions carried by trusted lieutenants.

Police said that they had been led to the farmhouse where Provenzano was hiding after monitoring his typewritten communications to his Mafia contacts. They said that the typewriter on which he had written his instructions had been found at the house.

Police had previously intercepted some of the letters, including notes written on scraps of paper known as pizzini to his wife asking for warm clothing when he was hiding in the mountains of Sicily. Until yesterday he had always escaped raids on his suspected hideouts. One of his cardinal rules, according to turncoats, was never to issue instructions over a mobile phone, knowing that calls could be intercepted and traced.

Prosecutors describe Provenzano as a man who helped the Mafia to spread its tentacles into the lucrative world of public works contracts in Sicily, creating for it more of a white-collar industry of illegal activity, with less dependence on revenue-making operations such as drug trafficking and extortion.

Once known as the Tractor because of his ruthlessness in mowing down enemies of the Corleone clan, Provenzano took command of the Mafia after the arrest in 1993 of Salvatore “Toto” Riina, who was then “boss of bosses”. He was taken in a crackdown on organised crime after the murders of two respected anti-Mafia judges, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, in 1992.

Signor Borsellino’s sister, Rita, is running in next month’s race for the governorship of Sicily on an anti- Mafia platform.

Provenzano joined the Mafia family of Michele Navarra after the Second World War and became an enforcer for Luciano Liggio, a prominent member of that family. He and Toto Riina, who was to build a reputation as one of the most vicious bosses in Mafia history, became Liggio’s most trusted enforcers. “He has the brains of a chicken but shoots like an angel,” Liggio said of Provenzano.

After taking over the Mafia, Provenzano, belying Liggio’s gibe, astutely changed its strategy, focusing less on murder and more on low-profile but lucrative activities such as money laundering, protection rackets, human trafficking, drugs, public contracts and construction. Despite his age, he created what the police call the “computer-literate new Mafia”.

President Ciampi sent his congratulations on the arrest to Giuseppe Pisanu, the Interior Minister, and the Palermo anti-Mafia police and prosecutors. Alfredo Mantovano, under-secretary at the Interior Ministry, said that the police now had “the man who, after the arrest of Toto Riina, is considered the most important person from Cosa Nostra. This is an important step forward for the entire nation”.

It had long been thought that many Sicilians knew where Provenzano was, but that the authorities lacked the political will to arrest him. Last year Pietro Grasso, Italy’s chief anti-Mafia prosecutor, caused a furore by saying that Provenzano had been protected by politicians and policemen.

Signor Berlusconi has long denied ties to the Mafia, but one of his chief lieutenants is appealing against a nine-year sentence for Mafia association, and in the 2001 election the Centre Right won all 61 seats in Sicily, allegedly thanks in part to Mafia influence.

Yesterday’s arrest, however, came too late to influence the Italian election. Police in Palermo said that it was the result of “classic police work” based partly on information from pentiti, or supergrasses. Alfredo Biondi, of Signor Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, said: “The arrest of Provenzano is great news.” He added drily: “If they had arrested him on Monday it would have been even better.”