Officials dismissed in Uruguay for escape of Italian criminal Morabit

Four police officers of the Uruguayan Interior Ministry will be dismissed for committing “severe” faults in the escape of Italian drug trafficker Rocco Morabito from prison in Montevideo in 2019, the Uruguayan Secretary of State informed yesterday.

“Those dismissed were in charge of maximum hierarchies within the controls that should have been in place and were not,” the Deputy Minister of the Interior, Guillermo Maciel, explained tonight.

In announcing the results of the administrative inquiry initiated almost four years ago to investigate the evasion, it was informed that three other officials committed “serious faults” and seven “minor faults”, while 14 were exonerated of responsibility.

In addition, the investigating magistrate reported five irregular situations that had not been investigated, so new administrative investigations were opened.

The escape of Morabito and three other inmates took place in the early morning of June 24, 2019, from the centrally located Central Prison in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, the country where he was arrested in 2017 after having resided for 12 years under a false identity.

Morabito, who at the time of the escape was 52 years old, was awaiting extradition to Italy and escaped to Brazil, where he was arrested in May 2021.

The criminal was finally extradited from Brazil in July last year to Italy, where he had been tried in absentia and sentenced to a 30-year prison term for international drug trafficking as one of the leaders of the Mafia’s Ndrangheta criminal organization.

News Uruguay, English news Uruguay, organized crime Uruguay, Rocco Morabito