After five years on the run, Mafia mobster is found at London newspaper kiosk

Of all the hiding places for a senior Mafia mobster, one would hardly have thought of a newspaper kiosk at Vauxhall train station in south London.

But, according to the police, that was where they found Francesco Tonicello, an armed robber who has been on the run for five years and who is suspected of having links to a notorious Mafia crime family.

The 35-year-old had managed to keep ahead of the Italian authorities, who sentenced him to nine years in jail in his absence, by donning a series of elaborate disguises. During the past five years he is said to have changed his appearance on numerous occasions, with different haircuts and hair colour, beard, moustache and glasses.

He adopted at least four different identities after moving to London, passing himself off as an ordinary Italian emigrant, doing various regular jobs. For some time he called himself "Gianluca Cappello" and lived in a flat in Vauxhall, a traffic-choked and distinctly unglamorous area. He previously lived in at least three other places in the capital.

But his London adventure came to an end last Wednesday when officers from the Metropolitan Police's extradition squad raided the home in Wandsworth Road, Vauxhall, that he shared with another Italian, after a surveillance operation.

When Tonicello was arrested, in the middle of the night, he tried to make out that he was not the person they were after.