News from Italy

[Strax]

Forgot to post source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... istmas-day

[aleksandrored]

Mafia, Cafiero De Raho: "2019 will be the year of the capture of Messina Denaro

"2019 will be the year of the capture of Matteo Messina Denaro". The national prosecutor Antimafia e Antiterrorismo is convinced of this, Federico Cafiero De Raho, who speaks in an interview with Gnewsonline.it, the new information newspaper of the Ministry of Justice.

"The networks that surround and support him are always numerous but from time to time, month after month, we intervene by cutting them in. In doing so you get closer to the goal and I think that 2019 will be the year of the end of his inaction. ", says the magistrate.

"I am convinced that the investigative activities developed on the national territory allow to achieve this goal - he always argues about the capture of Messina Denaro De Raho - I say this not only because I am optimistic but also because the commitments are extraordinary in terms of personnel and economic resources, which are currently investing in the capture of Messina Denaro ".

And again: "On the other hand, the State must necessarily achieve this goal because we can not allow men of the mafia caliber of Messina Denaro to continue to avoid research".

[aleksandrored]

Daughter of former Cosa Nostra leader opens restaurant in Paris

Lucia Riina, the youngest daughter of former Sicilian Mafia boss Salvatore "Totò" Riina, who died on November 17, 2017, at the age of 87, opened a restaurant in Paris, the capital of France.

Lucia, 39, moved to the "light city" with her husband, Vincenzo Bellomo, and her two-year daughter at the end of 2018 and now promises to bring the French "authentic Sicilian-Italian cuisine in an elegant and cozy atmosphere ".

The restaurant is called "Corleone by Lucia Riina" and refers to the city of origin of the bloodiest of Italian mobsters. The house is on Rue Daru, 800 meters from the Arc de Triomphe, and is owned by a French company called Luvitopace.

Contacted by telephone, a restaurant official said that "maybe" only the management of the place has been entrusted to Corleone's couple. Lucia, for her part, stated that she "does not give interviews" and asked for respect for her privacy.

She is the youngest of Riina's children and only discovered paternity after the mafioso's arrest in 1993. She had long wanted to leave Corleone, a small town in Sicily, where she said she felt "oppressed and marginalized."

The news of the restaurant comes one day after the Italian state notified Riina's family of a debt of € 2m related to spending to keep him in jail for 24 years.

When he died, the mafioso was serving 26 life sentences for dozens of homicides and attacks, such as those that killed the anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992.

The "boss" commanded the celebrated Corleone clan between 1982 and 1993, when he was arrested, and is considered the most bloodthirsty of the Italian mafiosos, having established a period of terror in Sicily. For prosecutors and politicians, Riina was the undisputed leader of Cosa Nostra until her death.

[CabriniGreen]

Sicily has a New Greco and a new LoPiccolo as powers......



https://www.france24.com/en/20190122-it ... afia-sting

[savior]

http://espresso.repubblica.it/attualita ... ef=RHRR-BE

Sorry...the article is written in italian but it's very interesting

[aleksandrored]

Mom and twins killed in Pizzolungo, off to the new trial: boss Galatolo accused by his rebel daughter.

Another criminal procedure opens for the mafia slaughter. The facts go back to the morning of April 2, 1985. "As soon as the news broke the news - he put on record Giovanna Galatolo - my mother began to scream: 'The children do not touch.' My father jumped on her, began to beat her. , he wanted to set the house on fire "

a massacre decided in a mafia summit in Castelvetrano, in the presence of the absolute leaders of Cosa nostra trapanese, Ciccio and Matteo Messina Denaro, father and son, as he put on record Santino Di Matteo, the repentant to whom the mafia for revenge killed the son, Giuseppe. This morning opens in Caltanissetta the "Pizzolungo quater", a new criminal case for the mafia slaughter of Pizzolungo of 2 April 1985: the attack against the then pm of Trapani Carlo Palermo, in which Barbara Rizzo Asta, 33, died and his 6-year-old twins, Salvatore and Giuseppe Asta. They were in the car that at the moment of the explosion of a car was a shield to that of the magistrate. The Procuratorate of Caltanissetta has asked the investigating judge for the indictment of the Palermo mafia boss of the Acquasanta district, Vincenzo Galatolo.

To accuse Galatolo are the "rebel" Giovanna Galatolo and the repentant Francesco Onorato. "As soon as the news broke," Giovanna Galatolo put on record, "my mother started screaming," The children do not touch. "My father jumped on her, started beating her, wanted to set the house on fire." "I was twenty," Giovanna said, "at home I heard my father saying, 'That judge is a cuckold." Then, the attack took place, and I realized, even my mother understood.

The facts go back to the morning of April 2, 1985. The Cosa Nostra trasito forever wiped out three lives: Barbara Rizzo, 30, and her sons Salvatore and Giuseppe Asta, six-year-old twins. For them it was the path of all time, on the Volkswagen Scirocco, along the road that runs along the seafront and that leads from Valderice to Trapani. The mafia wanted to kill the deputy prosecutor Carlo Palermo. An awkward magistrate, one of those who had decided to 'put their noses' in the lucrative drug deal. The bosses had warned him right away.

Up to this moment the motive has been traced back to the mafia strategy of those years, to hit the investigators and the magistrates who were working on the advanced front of the fight against Cosa Nostra. But there remain shadows on the role of occult powers, masonry and devious services of the state. The prosecutor Carlo Palermo in Trapani for just 40 days had already started investigations on the connections between mafia and white-collar workers, Cosa Nostra and entrepreneurs and was investigating the relationship between the mafia, business and Freemasonry.

The car bomb was placed on the side of the road, the state road that crosses Pizzolungo, in the Trapani area. Carlo Palermo was traveling from Bonagia to the courthouse of Trapani, aboard a 132 armored vehicle. But between that car and the car loaded with TNT there is one with two children on board. The car bomb is exploded, but the utility shields the armored magistrate, who remains only injured. Barbara, Salvatore and Giuseppe, however, are catapulted miles away and their car disintegrated. A family destroyed, annihilated. For that massacre, thanks to the statements of some collaborators of justice, mafia bosses have been convicted of the caliber of Salvatore Riina, Vincenzo Virga, Antonino Madonna and Baldassarre Di Maggio.

In the file of the new trial there are the declarations of Honored that place Pizzolungo inside a possible "negotiation". The TNT used in Pizzolungo is the same used in other massacres: in December 1984, a rapid train attack 904 (for which the Sicilian mafia cashier Pippo Calò was convicted), the attempt to attack Addaura against Giovanni Falcone in 1989 he was found in via D'Amelio on 19 July 1992, where Borsellino and his escort agents were killed. And now the fourth trial begins for this massacre. The first against the perpetrators, all belonging to the mafia clan of Alcamo, then acquitted definitively by the Supreme Court, after a first conviction in the first degree. Two other trials have seen the Mafia chiefs Totò Riina and Vincenzo Virga definitively convicted and in another the Palermo bosses Nino Madonia and Balduccio di Maggio.

[Wiseguy]

Italy’s ‘mafia bosses getting richer’ as far-right minister Salvini targets immigrants instead

The interior minister announced a review on spending on police protection for people threatened by the mafia
Meanwhile, mafia clans continue to earn billions from waste dumping and the cocaine trade as immigration numbers fall dramatically.

(See rest of article below)

https://m.scmp.com/news/world/europe/ar ... er-salvini

[aleksandrored]

Mafia in Sicily, Cosa Nostra ready to reorganize. Dia's alarm: "Emerging leaders and historic families ready to climb positions of power. Not including cruel violence "

In recent years, although Cosa Nostra has suffered a "weakening as a compact and unitary organization", now "the power vacuum that has come to determine" poses "a need for renewal and overall reorganization of the organization, probably no longer postponed" also give rise to "particularly violent acts of violence". This is what emerges from the six-monthly report of the Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate (Dia) covering the period between January and June 2018. The weakening of Cosa Nostra is due, explains Dia, "also due to the subtle juxtaposition of two currents: the one , intransigent and extremist, linked to the 'Riina line' and the other, more moderate and less willing to the unmeasured use of force, the one that historically has always referred to the relationship, almost arithmetic, between costs and benefits ". Among the unresolved issues "fits the classification of the figure of Matteo Messina Denaro". Although "the fugitive has enjoyed relationships, consolidated, dating back in time, with men of honor of the strategic mandates of Palermo, such as those of Brancaccio and Bagheria, the elements of the summit of the regional capital, especially after the Corleone experience, would not be now favorable to being represented by a non-Palermo leader, especially when, as in the case of the fugitive from Castelvetrano (TP), he is called, firstly, as recent investigative activities testify, continually confirming, due to his' absence from operations 'from the territory, the role of leader in the province of Trapani ". "It is to be evaluated, moreover, as in such a scenario - we read in the report -, especially for the consequent damages, at the end of the 80s, to the concentration of power in the hands of the Corleonesi, some families and mandates could in the future want to see recognized greater autonomy, with a more binding power on its territory. It can not be excluded that emerging leaders, also heirs of historic families, take advantage of the situation and look for spaces to climb positions of power. It is also not to be excluded that, in the light of the unclear evolution of the described framework, the complex dynamics of the organization can lead to particularly violent acts of violence. A possibility, to tell the truth, so far not supported by clues that presage a precise will to return to striking forms of conflict ".

[aleksandrored]

Cosa nostra, the boss Santapaola speaks: "Totò Riina wanted to kill the Catania prosecutor"

New revelation of the boss Santapaola: "Totò Riina wanted to kill the prosecutor of Catania, but I oppose"

New revelations by Vincenzo Santapaola, son of Salvatore and nephew of the boss Benedetto. During the trial before the Court of Assumption of Appeal of Catania which sees him charged for the murder of Luigi Ilardo, assassinated, according to the indictment, on May 10, 1996 because he was suspected by Cosa Nostra to collaborate with justice, Vincenzo Santapaola has confessed to the judges that Toto 'Riina after the massacres of Capaci and Via D'Amelio, had ordered the killing also of Mario Busacca, then attorney of Catania. To avoid the massacre was the clan of the Santapaola, which, according to when reported by Vincenzo Santapaola, would have opposed the carnage. "It was Natale Di Raimondo - said Vincenzo Santapaola - to bring the order from Palermo, but I objected to it because we were against sensational crimes. In Catania one could rest assured ". What has been recounted by the defendant confirms the thesis of magistrates and investigators, who have always been aware that after the excellent massacres of the early 1990s, the Santapaolas refused to carry out other crimes in order not to raise the reactions of the State. And it was precisely the attitude of the Santapaola that pushed Totò Riina to focus on the honorable man, Santo Mazzei.

According to the defense of Vincenzo Santapaola, it was therefore not possible to organize Ilardo's murder. For the brutal crime the Prosecutor General has however requested confirmation of the conviction in the first degree and therefore: life imprisonment to the chiefs Giuseppe Madonia and Vincenzo Santapaola, accused of being the principals, the boss, as organizer, Maurizio Zuccaro and Orazio Benedetto Cocimano, as a material performer. Pietro Giuffrida and Maurizio Signorino, both of whom died, also took part in the murder.

[aleksandrored]

Messina Denaro, "leader" downhill. La Dia: «Cosa Nostra is faithful to him»

"Rome attraction pole of all the mafias".

"The chameleonic strategy implemented by the mafia associations has made it more difficult to understand and bring out the phenomenon, thus favoring the attempts at conditioning local administrations"
The document was presented to the Parliament. The Dome no longer exists because different mandates no longer want a super-territorial structure that can influence its own affairs. Messina Denaro commands only in Trapani. Unfortunately, after 26 years of inaction, the Dia report does not regret giving a line that leads to the capture that would definitely free the territory from the boss. The pressure of the state has reached very high levels in recent years. Everything was checked at Castelvetrano. There have been investigations and arrests for over 10 years. The boss family and close friends are in jail. Who still protects this rogue? A hiding requires links. A person who has the age of Matteo Messina Denaro can not be free from health problems and other assets. Or it is a "Martian" and manages to challenge the laws of nature. State pressure continues. Also the municipality was dissolved. It is necessary to understand better the chameleonism of Messina Denaro and of whom, perhaps he has always helped and still, has not been touched by investigators' investigations. How can one explain such a long hiding place if Mesina Denaro no longer has the support of the other mafia families? At least, according to the latest statements of DiaMessina Denaro has been "laid"

In the report of the anti-mafia investigative Directorate, the role of the fugitive is reiterated as a provincial representative, but according to the highest investigators it would remain a formal task. On the territory, in any case, it is his family to command. Despite the many arrests still the clan of Messina Denaro, according to Dia comanda

The province of Trapani continues to be in the grip of Cosa Nostra that monopolizes the management of the most profitable illegal activities and conditions the socio-economic context of the entire provincial territory. This is what emerges from the semi-annual report of the Dia that devotes ample space to the role of the fugitive boss Matteo Messina Denaro. For the investigators, the fugitive Castelvetranese, despite the numerous operations that led to the arrest of faithful and faithful, continues to maintain the dual role of head of the mandate of Castelvetrano and provincial representative of Cosa Nostra. A role, however, that according to recent statements by the highest investigators, it would be increasingly formal.

A leadership questioned, however, by the words of the Palermo police chief Renato Cortese who, during an interview with the online 24-hour Sole, described Messina Denaro as "a subject that probably no longer has any role in the organization and that so he is defunct, leaves no traces, does not participate in meetings, does not have criminal strategies, the affiliates do not realize it to him. It is a subject that is making its inaction probably also outside Sicily ".

The same General Giuseppe Governale, number one of the Dia, indicating 2019 as the year of the capture of the boss, underlined how Messina Denaro while remaining at the head of the cosca trapanese would no longer be operating for some time. The superlatitant also found space in the report on the administration of justice in 2018 of the president of the Court of Appeal of Palermo, Matteo Frasca, who also has jurisdiction over the district of Trapani. "We can reasonably exclude the interference of the famous fugitive Messina Denaro Matteo in the association dynamics of the Palermo mandates", stressed Frasca, placing another piece in the thesis, now prevalent among investigators and investigators, who wants a Matteo Messina Money more and more foreign to the decisions of Cosa Nostra on the territory.


Mafia and Capital

The capital area, "home to important infrastructures, political and administrative institutions and numerous commercial activities, is a pole of attraction for organized crime". Also for "the availability of compliant entrepreneurs and public officials to adhere to requests and behaviors of a corruptive nature". It is a disturbing picture drawn by the focus dedicated to Rome and its hinterland from the last six-monthly report of the Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate.

"From the analysis of criminal manifestations - the analysts of Dia say - emerges the existence of a structure of a reticular nature that tends to infiltrate the places of decisional and economic power, and in which the individual associations now form temporary alliances, functional to the 'obtaining timely objectives, they can now - but rarely - come into conflict. The violent attitude, in fact, remains as a form of 'quiescent capital', ready to explode if the interests of the consortium are threatened ". Rome, international metropolis, "is a crossroads of business, as well as a privileged meeting point between Italian and foreign criminal organizations".

THE CAMALEONTIC STRATEGY - "The chameleonic strategy implemented by the mafia associations - warns the Report - has made it more difficult, over time, to understand and bring out the phenomenon, thus favoring the attempts at conditioning local administrations. It was a common opinion, up to the most recent events that unveiled the picture of 'Mafia Capitale' that the prevailing interest cultivated by the traditional mafias established in the capital was that of recycling "but" the complex judicial case against the Buzzi-Carminati group has shown the methodological change of the criminal groups, which sometimes proceed by combining the violent intimidation with the entrepreneurial overpower and the pervasive 'colonization' of the bureaucratic-political system. An organization that, using the interaction of the intimidating method with the corruptive method, had succeeded in becoming part of some of the administrative management of the Municipality of Rome ".

According to the Anti-Mafia Investigation Department "the reconstitution of this structure, after many years of inactivity, would not seem desired by all the representatives of the mandates, especially those more active in the management of economic activities even outside the territory of competence that, accustomed to acting almost in autonomy, they could suffer the restriction of the rules imposed by the Commission ".

A tendency which, however, reveals Dia, which however is "still evolving, precisely in relation to the reconstitution of the Provincial Commission".

The scenario that emerges is however of a Mafia, as we know it, in crisis because "the action of contrast of the institutions, has led to the removal of substantial assets of illicit origin and the arrest of a large number of affiliates and leaders added to the prolonged state of detention of many elements of the summit and in any case of the most authoritative bosses, many of whom were subjected to the "hard prison" and therefore also displaced in various prisons of the national territory, a circumstance that further affected on the long lack of an effective top structure - the so-called dome - legitimized to make decisions in the name of the whole Cosa Nostra - due to the detention of its members and especially the boss, Salvatore Riina, died, as noted, November 17, 2017 » .

But we must not sing victory because, as Dia emphasizes, "the mafias derive the" lifeblood "necessary to regenerate themselves in ever younger subjects, employed in low-skilled professions or without jobs". In short, the mafia is investing more and more on "entrepreneurs and freelancers", but also aims to enlist "common workers" and "waiting for employment" in the younger segment, that between 18 and 40 years. In analyzing the phenomenon, Dia underlines how the mafias, despite "the strong repressive action of the state", continue to have an "attractive capacity" on the younger generations, not only in the case of boss sons or boys coming from mafia families but also and especially when these are part of a much larger basin of "general recruitment" from which "to draw criminal labor". A basin that continues to be fueled by the difficult social conditions of the south: recruitment, says Dia, "certainly does not appear to be separated from a widespread social crisis that does not seem to offer young people valid alternatives for emancipation from the mafia culture".

In essence, the mafias "significantly reduce the entrepreneurial initiative licit, take advantage of the state of need of many young people and speculate on local labor, giving the ephemeral feeling of distributing a salary (always minimal to generate dependence and without ensuring social security contributions and therefore a future) to the young employees in his service because they lack alternatives ».

Concepts that the numbers make clear even more clearly: in the last five years not only have there been cases of "mafia" with an age between 14 and 18 years, but members of the gang between 18 and 40 have reached numbers almost equal to those between the ages of 40 and 65 and, in one case, they even exceeded it (in 2015 the reported and arrested for 416 bis were 5,437 of which 2,792 between 18 and 40 years and 2,654 among the 45 and 60).

THE TRADITIONAL MAFIE - Rome constitutes "a strategic territory for the 'Ndrangheta, which has long placed trustworthy' pontè heads called to adopt criminal methodologies marked by lower visibility, especially if related to the redeployment of illicit capital. Determinant is the relational network that the cosche have managed to weave, over time, with professionals, economic operators and representatives of the world of finance, available to lend their experience to facilitate their interests on a national and foreign level ": the ability to infiltrate the territory, concealing its traces, however, makes it difficult to trace an exact mapping of the clans.

[aleksandrored]

Mafia, who is the head of Cosa Nostra (and it is not Messina Denaro)

The superlatitator has never been at the top of the Sicilian mafia, but controls only Trapanese. And today investigators believe that there is no supreme godfather. Because the state prevents the Palermo families from reorganizing themselves.

He is the great fugitive, but not the big boss. The long flight of Matteo Messina Denaro, who for 26 years has escaped from the institutions' research, often confuses the common perception and leads us to consider him as the man who commands Cosa Nostra. It is not so. And it never has been.

Of course, Messina Denaro has controlled and continues to manage immense assets, despite the seizures against his lieutenants. And it has shown a unique ability to deceive all investigators, despite decades of being at the top of the Most Wanted list. But his criminal history has always been confined to Trapanese, considered a rich but not strategic province in the equilibrium of Cosa Nostra. Of this territory together with his father he has arbitrated the mafia dynamics since the eighties. But according to the repentant only in 1998 he inherited the role of master of Castelvetrano, his hometown, replacing the dead parent in hiding.

The Messina Money have been part of the dome, the supreme council dominated by Totò Riina, supporting in 1992 the decision to challenge the state with the massacres. The young Matteo would have taken up arms in the first person, making himself available for the assassination attempts against the then Minister Claudio Martelli and against Giovanni Falcone: ambushes that should have taken place in Rome. And even after the capture of the Corleone godfather, the Messina Money would carry forward the line of total war, until the settlement at the summit of Bernardo Provenzano did not determine the end of the season of fire.

In those years, the authority of Messina Denaro seems to have extended to areas of Aggrentino and Palermo, more than anything else to fill the gaps in the ranks of the deployment loyal to the Corleonesi. Then the increase of pressure by the investigators after his father's death, led him to retire in his faiths, between Castelvetrano and Marsala. He would concentrate on the business and the management of the escape, which became more and more complicated due to the constant police and carabinieri blitz. But it has never been recorded by the investigators its leading role in the conduct of Cosa Nostra.

So one question remains: who is today the great godfather of the Sicilian Mafia? On this point magistrates, investigators and scholars have long conducted a long debate. But there is the strong conviction that today there is no longer a stable central organization: even the so-called "provincial Commission" of Palermo that decided the summits and strategies would not even be able to meet to deliberate. No assemblies of the Commission and therefore no "chief of chiefs".

For example, Giuseppe Pignatone and Michele Prestipino support him in the book "Criminal Models" just published for Laterza. The Rome prosecutor and his deputy, who have worked for years in Palermo, write: "If it is now proven that the provincial commission, at least from a formal point of view, has never ceased to exist, there is no doubt that after the arrest of Salvatore Riina, on January 15, 1993, it has not been reunited Until that date - and during the previous ten years - the Commission, always chaired by Riina, took part all the heads of the province of Palermo, according to a model of formal correspondence between summit and territory ".

The reaction of the institutions after the massacres has undermined this system: "Before the arrest of many members of this group, then that of the same Provenzano have opened a new phase.As in other times of crisis, the modules of government become impractical organization - founded, at least in substance, on the actions of the most authoritative leaders -, the survival of the organizational structure and the search for new balances with the establishment of a new leadership, in the absence of leaders recognized in a state of freedom, are have been entrusted to the revitalization of the formal rules.The attempt, carried out precisely in the last period, of a stable reconstitution of the Commission, never formally canceled, however, has not had any effect for the intervention, once again timely, of the repressive organs of the State with the arrest, on December 11, 2018, of numerous people including the boss Settimo Mineo, defined by the press "the new boss of Cosa ours ", who however had just resumed his activity for a few months, after being detained for many years. The search for new balances and a new leadership does not seem to have had a landing yet ".

Be careful though. The Palermo mafia has suffered harsh blows but has not been eradicated. And look to the future starting from its tradition, trying to give new life to the oldest rules. So far it has not yet managed to find a leader who can revive the criminal action. However, he continues to try the rescue. And wait only for the attention of the institutions to start to fall.

[aleksandrored]

Via d'Amelio, the repentant Francesco Di Carlo speaks
«Our gift has given us a nice gift to the State»

The former boss of Altofonte spoke for more than four hours at the trial for aggravated slander against the policemen Bo, Mattei and Ribaudo. "Falcone and Borsellino were a danger, they wanted to remove them, even discrediting them. So they were looking for a contact with the mafia »

"Nino Gioè used to say that the massacre in via d'Amelio had been made by those in the neighborhood, I do not know who he was referring to, whether to those of Villagrazia or Brancaccio. It turned out that Cosa Nostra gave us a nice gift to the State, or at least to those subjects who were afraid that many things were discovered ... I say it compared to those who had come to visit me several times in prison and to what they told me, to their obvious hatred for the Falcone system and for all those who were close to him, like Borsellino. " Apart from some small details, Francesco Di Carlo seems to remember many things of his years spent in Cosa Nostra, and especially of what happened when he stopped being part of it. Affiliated on a Saturday afternoon of May 1961 to the Altofonte family, he worked for fifteen years as a simple soldier, in 1970 he became a councilor and five years later his family. But it does not last long: in '79 he resigned, "I did not like the way he behaved and some of the family, Bernardo Brusca was a victim of Totò Riina, Bagarella always went around to see if there was someone to kill, like they were chickens for slaughter, I did not like them. "

However, he remained in Cosa Nostra until about82, two years before becoming a fugitive until 1985, "but anyway I always used my name, I had a wine bar in London". He has much to tell the judges of Caltanissetta, who heard Friday at the trial against the police Mario Bo, Fabrizio Mattei and Michele Ribaudo, who must respond to aggravated slander, to have had, in essence, a role in the manipulation and creation of the false repentant Vincenzo Scarantino. From the murder of Roberto Calvi, from which he always dismissed the accusations calling out, to the intertwining between the P2 and Sicilian Cosa Cosa ("it could not happen that the Masonry came into Palermo and province.In Agrigento, Caltanissetta, Trapani maybe yes, to Palermo no »). Until some suicides / murders, as he calls them, like that of Nino Gioè, boss of Altofonte found hanged in the security arm of Rebibbia one night in July of '93, a few meters from Totò Riina, held in a nearby cell. And that also of the marshal Mario Ferraro, that his wife is hanged in the bathroom of the house. In 1988 he is the one who goes to see Di Carlo in the English prison of Full Sutton. He is in the company of three other men, all linked to the English ministry and to the secret services: I am a certain Giovanni, Nigel and another Italian whose name I do not initially understand.

It will take years to recognize it. It happens when he finds his photograph published in the Giornale di Sicilia on the sidelines of a news: it is Arnaldo La Barbera. Before that meeting, "he had presented himself to the judges Ayala and Di Lello, but he had remained outside the interrogation room - he recalls -. He had killed a robber, one of Cosa Nostra, in a shaving room, it was not normal for a policeman who kills one of our own. Unless you have relationships with Cosa Nostra and then you are guaranteed, but you are normally punished, the gun can only use it for other things but not to kill, it is the regulation of Cosa Nostra, at least once. " In 2002 he went to his funeral, in order to find again the other men with whom he had spoken years before in the English prison, but he does not recognize anyone. Despite having well impressed their faces and also their precise request of the time: "They wanted a contact with Cosa Nostra through me, because Cosa Nostra continued to grind murders, Chinnici was also dead, they wanted to remove from Palermo Falcone and his magistrates more neighbors, the first was Borsellino, they were both a soul and a body, they had it with them because they had made a young police team, from De Gennaro to Manganelli, and they did not know anything about the bosses at the same time Falcone was shaking his wrists. "

Italian visitors, including Barbera, tell Di Carlo that Falcone "was a danger, he and even Borsellino". That is why they are looking for that famous contact. «At that time Sicily was controlled by Cosa Cosa centimeter per centimeter, no matter what was done by someone who was not of Cosa Nostra we knew, a murder in Sicily could only do it Cosa Nostra, because if it does one who is not part of it we immediately try to kill him, the police in Palermo knew it, everybody knew it, carabinieri, secret services, everyone. Colonel Russo was killed because while trying to take an extoror from Altavilla, he accidentally killed one of his fellow policemen, but then he blamed the murder to the alleged extoror who had nothing to do with it, he was not honest . So he had to be punished. " The goal seems, therefore, to remove Falcone and his closest men at all costs, "even by discrediting them. I remember the anonymous letters that spoke badly about Falcone and about the rumor made by Cosa Nostra that the bomb at Addaura had put it on its own. " What happened to the previous contact? "They told me that first there was Saro Riccobono, killed in 1982, who had a certain friendship with Bruno Contrada. That's why the new contact, but it did not have to be a rookie ".

«But Cosa Nostra does nothing for nothing», underlines Di Carlo. Meanwhile, if he had tried to give them a helping hand from the jail, he would get a rapprochement with the mafia organization. «But all this pleasure to return I did not have it, I felt so free to not have more to do with these things, with these subjects. "We are not about to arrest", the four say to me, "we have interests in other things, give us a right path and we promise that the trials are going well, otherwise you will have no way out with these magistrates". So, I sent out a letter and addressed it to Ignazio Salvo's office in Rome. My mediation would have been some sort of compensation from the point of view of my freedom ". Until, years later, Di Carlo does not meet Nigel: "" Your villagers wanted to kill you, I saved your life, "he tells me. It is not for me that this thing was going down - says the witness -. For so many years I wondered how I could kill them to those three, since they wanted me to take a bath from the helicopter. "

[aleksandrored]

Drugs and abigeate controlled by Cosa Nostra: 20 years in Fragapane jr, acquitted Mangullo and Lampasona and Manzullo



Twenty years of imprisonment for Francesco Fragapane, considered the top of the mafia family of Santa Elisabetta; Five years and four months against Giuseppe Quaranta, today a collaborator of justice to whom the extenuating circumstances have been recognized precisely for their collaboration; six years to Girolamo Campione, 41, of Burgio, five years of imprisonment to Salvatore Montalbano, 25 years of Favara; another 20 years each for Carmelo Battaglia, Concetto Giuseppe Errigo, the Calabresi Giuseppe Piccolo and Vincenzo Politanò; eight years of imprisonment for Ambra Errigo while the agrigentini Roberto Lampasona, 41 years of Santa Elisabetta, Roberto Mangione, 38 years of Raffadali and Antonino Manzullo, 52, of Burgio, have been acquitted.

Eight sentences and two acquittals. The device was read shortly after 3 pm by the Court of Catania of Ettore Cavallaro. Therefore, the first chapter of the trial (abbreviated rite) that emerged from the operation - coordinated by the Catania DDA - "Proelio", which shed light on the trafficking of drugs and abigeables controlled by Cosa Nostra and, in particular, bringing out the close ties between the mafia family of Santa Elisabetta and that of Comiso. Together, among other things, they have also established a series of contacts with Calabrian exponents to stock up on drugs.

The current collaborator of justice, Giuseppe Quaranta, was condemned too: immediately after the arrest that took place in the context of the Montagna operation, the now ex-referent of the Fragapane family benefited from all the extenuating circumstances that derive from the collaboration. Partially acknowledged participant in the mafia association, although he has always denied this circumstance.

The deputy prosecutor of the DDA of Catania Valentina Sincero had requested a sentence of 8 years and 4 months against Roberto Lampasona and Antonino Mangione (defended by the lawyers Nino and Enza Gaziano); the highest penalty had been requested against Fragapane (20 years and 6 months, defended by Barba and La Carrubba lawyers). For Quaranta (defended by the lawyer Gloria Lupo), however, the request for a sentence was 4 years and 2 months.

[otaru]

Camorra: Marco Di Lauro, acting boss of Di Lauro clan arrested in Naples

Italian police have arrested top mafia fugitive Marco Di Lauro, the fourth son of Camorra boss Paolo Di Lauro and the only one still at large, officials said on Saturday. Di Lauro, 38, was arrested without a fight at an apartment in the Chiaiano district in southern city Naples where he was with his wife, Italian news agencies reported. An international arrest warrant was issued for him in 2006, and he was second on Italy's most-wanted list after notorious Sicilian Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro.

Photos in Italian media showed Di Lauro wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt being brought to the police station in Naples by car, with a police helicopter overhead. Around 100 people including police gathered outside shouting "well done, well done", local media reported. Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini hailed a "very important operation, no respite for criminals."

Di Lauro had been on the run since he escaped a massive police swoop in 2004 known as the "night of the handcuffs." An informant said in 2010 that Di Lauro was responsible for at least four murders.

[Wiseguy]

Another article on DiLauro's capture. A big catch for Italian law enforcement. Said to be the second most-wanted behind Matteo Messina Denaro.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... aples.html


Video

https://youtu.be/djId_UIASVM