Marco Raduano broke out of high-security wing of a prison in Sardinia in February 2023
A notorious mafia boss who escaped from a high-security prison in Italy last year using bedsheets has been recaptured in France, according to authorities in both countries.
Marco Raduano, recognized as dangerous on Europol’s list of most wanted criminals, was captured in Bastia on the French island of Corsica, authorities said on Friday.
Continue reading...Maurizio Patriciello has had police protection since a bombing near his church in Caivano, Naples, but he vows to keep fighting crime
Father Maurizio Patriciello is running late. “I’m waiting for my bodyguards,” he says by text message.
He is neither a celebrity nor a politician but a parish priest in Caivano, a desolate, crime-ridden town on the outskirts of Naples. He has been living under police protection ever since a bomb, accompanied by the message “get out of our way”, exploded by the gate of his church.
Continue reading...Mafia informant Raffaele Imperiale hands over globe-shaped artificial isle to show willingness to cooperate
A former drug trafficker turned mafia informant has handed over an artificial island he owns off the coast of Dubai to the Italian authorities in the hope of receiving a reduced sentence.
The announcement was made during the trial in Naples on Monday, which involved about 20 defendants, including Raffaele Imperiale, nicknamed “the Van Gogh boss”, a notorious international drug trafficker for the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia.
Continue reading...Specially built courtroom in Calabria heard evidence of ruthless tactics of ’Ndrangheta crime syndicate
An Italian court has convicted and sentenced more than 200 people of crimes including criminal association, extortion and bribery in what has been described as Italy’s largest mafia trial in three decades.
The verdicts mark the end of a three-year “maxi trial” held in a high-security courtroom in the southern Calabria region built specifically to hold up to 350 defendants, accommodate 400 lawyers and hear from the 900 witnesses providing testimony against an extensive network of members belonging to the notorious ’Ndrangheta.
Continue reading...Singer, whose music has been linked to crime gangs, and his wife are among 27 held in police raids targeting the Di Lauro clan
Before announcing his retirement from singing in 2020, Antonio “Tony” Colombo was arguably the most acclaimed singer of neomelodico, an Italian pop genre that resonates strongly within mafia strongholds in the southern regions of Italy.
His songs were so highly praised among the underworld that when he married Tina Rispoli, the widow of the slain Neapolitan mafia boss Gaetano Marino, in 2019, dozens of members of the Camorra attended their wedding.
Continue reading...Three sisters who own farm in Mezzojuso say they will appeal after men cleared due to lack of evidence
Three men accused of threatening three Sicilian sisters who claimed to have been targeted by the local mafia have been acquitted due to lack of evidence.
The sisters claimed to be victims of the so-called “cattle mafia”, a group of mobsters accused of driving farmers from their lands with intimidation campaigns in order to obtain EU agricultural subsidies of up to €1,000 a hectare.
Continue reading...Pasquale Bonavota featured on police’s list of most dangerous criminals
Italian authorities have announced the arrest of a top boss of the ’Ndrangheta mafia after he spent almost five years on the run.
Pasquale Bonavota, 49, who featured on the police’s list of most dangerous criminals, had been sought since November 2018 after escaping an arrest warrant for homicide and mafia association issued by a magistrate in Calabria, southern Italy.
Continue reading...Matteo Messina Denaro’s hand-typed instructions found hidden in sofa at home of his sister Rosalia, say police
The sister of Italy’s recently jailed top mobster, described as “the last godfather of the Sicilian mafia”, has been arrested after police searching her house found pizzini – slips of paper that the boss used to deliver his hand-typed instructions.
According to investigators, Rosalia Messina Denaro, the sister of Matteo Messina Denaro – who was Italy’s most wanted man until his arrest on 16 Janurary – had helped her brother evade capture for 30 years and acted on his behalf as the “cashier” of the “family”, while also running the transmission network of the pizzini, thus enabling the mafia boss to maintain relations with his organisation during his long period as a fugitive.
Continue reading...Giuseppe Graviano files for defamation against Gomorrah author over origin of nickname
A Sicilian mobster has asked a judge to order the seizure of all copies of a book by the author Roberto Saviano, who is living under police protection after he faced death threats for exposing mafia secrets.
Giuseppe Graviano, who is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison, filed a lawsuit for defamation last week against the author of books including Gomorrah, and Solo è il Coraggio (Lonely is the Courage), about the life of the judge Giovanni Falcone, who was killed by the mafia in 1992.
Continue reading...‘Last godfather’ of Sicilian mafia Matteo Messina Denaro was arrested after 30 years on run
Italian military police have found a possible secret bunker suspected of being used by Matteo Messina Denaro, the “last godfather” of the Sicilian mafia who was arrested on Monday after 30 years on the run.
The entrance to the bunker was concealed in a closet full of clothes in a house in Campobello di Mazara, a small town in Sicily where the apartment Denaro, 60, had been living in was discovered on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Italian investigators discover designer clothes and expensive shoes inside ‘normal’ two-storey building
The mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, one of the world’s most-wanted criminals who had spent 30 years on the run, lived in a modest apartment in western Sicily in his final months as a free man, Italian investigators said.
Denaro, 60, who was apprehended as he came out of a well-known private clinic in Palermo, lived in a small apartment inside a two-storey yellow building in the centre of the town of Campobello di Mazara, in the province of Trapani, in the heart of his territory.
Continue reading...‘Last godfather’ was apprehended as he came out of the private health facility on outskirts of Palermo
An Italian mob boss regarded as the last godfather of the Sicilian mafia was arrested after investigators received a tipoff that one of the world’s most wanted criminals had been receiving medical treatment for a tumour at a well-known clinic in Palermo, police sources have said.
Matteo Messina Denaro, 60, who has been in hiding since 1993, was apprehended as he came out of the private La Maddalena health facility on the outskirts of the Sicilian city, where special forces had been on guard since authorities first learned of his whereabouts three days ago. He was wearing luxury clothes and a €38,000 (£33,700) watch.
Continue reading...Alleged to be a boss of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra mafia, Denaro had been on run for 30 years and was arrested in Palermo
Matteo Messina Denaro, the last “godfather” of the Sicilian mafia and one of the world’s most-wanted criminals, has been arrested in Palermo after 30 years on the run.
Denaro, 60, who has been in hiding since 1993, was apprehended in a private clinic in the Sicilian city.
Continue reading...Investigation takes aim at everything from Cosa Nostra whiskey to El Padrino restaurant in Spain and Nasi Goreng Mafia eaterie in Indonesia
Italy’s biggest farmers’ association is waging a battle against the “scandalous” use of mafia terms to sell a variety of food and drink products around the world, from Cosa Nostra whiskey to Chilli Mafia tomato sauce.
Coldiretti undertook an extensive investigation and also discovered that almost 300 restaurants beyond Italy have mafia-themed names, including El Padrino in Spain, Don Corleone in Finland, Burger Mafia in Germany, Falafel Mafia in the US and Nasi Goreng Mafia in Indonesia.
Continue reading...Thirty-nine people imprisoned for forcing a procession in Sicily to pay homage to crime boss Francesco La Rocca in 2016
A judge in Sicily has handed down jail sentences totalling 80 years to 39 people for diverting a Good Friday religious procession to the house of a mafia family and paying homage to an imprisoned crime boss.
People were carrying a statue of Jesus Christ through the Sicilian village of San Michele Di Ganzaria at Easter in 2016 when a group stopped the cortege, moved it away from the agreed itinerary and forced it to pass in front of the house of the mafia godfather Francesco La Rocca.
Continue reading...Bruno Carbone, right-hand man of mafia boss Raffaele Imperiale, was arrested at Rome airport amid claims he was extradited from Syria
The arrest of an Italian drug trafficker who was on Europol’s most wanted list is shrouded in mystery amid reports that he was captured and extradited from Syria.
Bruno Carbone, who had been on the run since 2003, was the right-hand man of Raffaele Imperiale, a drug broker for the Naples’ Camorra mafia who was arrested in Dubai in August 2021.
Continue reading...Anti-mafia journalist to appear in court in Rome over comments made about policy towards migrants drowning in Mediterranean
Italy’s new far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is suing one of the world’s best-known journalists, the anti-mafia and human rights campaigner Roberto Saviano, for criminal defamation, over remarks he made regarding her policy towards migrants drowning in the Mediterranean sea.
This is the second time in just under four years that senior government ministers have targeted Saviano, 43, with criminal proceedings, despite a duty to protect him after the Neapolitan Camorra issued a death threat following publication of his book Gomorrah in 2006.
Continue reading...Recent revelations have only fed speculation that some form of plot lay behind the gangster’s brutal demise in prison
US organized crime has long held a tight grip on America’s popular imagination, sustaining entire industries of books, television series and Hollywood movies, as well as countless breathless headlines in tabloid newspapers.
But few names have been as famous as the south Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, who for decades presented himself as a benevolent gangster who protected his community and was given Hollywood treatment by Johnny Depp in “Black Mass” and Jack Nicholson in “The Departed”.
Continue reading...Librino’s amateur players have to guard their new pitch and facilities every night – but it’s worth it to keep children out of the clutches of Cosa Nostra
Gloria Mertoli’s shift is over when the first light of dawn shines on the goalposts of a rugby pitch in the Librino district of Catania, a stronghold of the Cosa Nostra, the feared Sicilian mafia. Since mobsters torched the clubhouse and team bus, she and other players on the women’s rugby team, Briganti Librino RUFC, have taken turns to stay after evening practice and guard the area overnight.
Since the club started working to take children – easy targets for mafia recruitment – off the streets of Librino, the clans have tried to put it out of business. “Librino is a complex neighbourhood,” Piero Mancuso, one of the founders of the Briganti, told the Observer. “We knew it wouldn’t be easy to work here. These criminal attacks risked destroying everything we had achieved in recent years. But if I look at what we have done so far, I can say that these attacks have made us stronger.”
Continue reading...State governor says surprise operation against drug gangs and mafia groups is start of ‘transformational’ occupation
Hundreds of heavily armed police have stormed one of Rio’s largest favelas at the start of what authorities claimed was a “transformational” attempt to wrest back control from the drug gangs and paramilitary mafias which dominate huge swaths of the Brazilian city.
The operation began at daybreak on Wednesday as security forces in camouflage gear and armoured personnel carriers swept into Jacarezinho, a bustling redbrick community that has been a stronghold of the Red Command drug faction since the 1980s.
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