“Fifty of us searched the two-storey villa where Pelle had always lived, but it took a very attentive eye to discover his hiding place,” police commander Francesco Ratta said in comments broadcast on TV.

Pelle had lain silently in a niche built behind the wardrobe during the search until he was discovered, police said. The room contained a mattress, a fan, some bottles of water and cash, the video showed.

First arrested and jailed in 2008, Pelle escaped three years later when he was sent to hospital for urgent medical treatment. 

Pelle is considered the head of the Pelle-Vottari clan, which is active in the Calabrian town of San Luca. It has been fighting the Nirta-Strangio clan, which drew international attention to Calabria’s ’Ndrangheta mob in 2007 when one of its feuds left six dead in an Italian restaurant in Duisburg, Germany.

Over the past two decades the Calabrian mafia, known as the ‘Ndrangheta, has become Italy’s most powerful and wealthy organised crime group thanks to its role as one of Europe’s biggest importers of South American cocaine, investigators say.