An Italian senator has demanded the government intervene after a convicted Mafia boss was freed from jail because he was suffering from depression.
Anti-Mafia Commission member Carlo Vizzini called the release of Giacomo Ieni into house arrest "scandalous".
Ieni had been sentenced to eight years for racketeering, but broke down in tears in front of his parole board, saying he could not take jail any more.
The board ruled that detaining him in hospital would endanger his health.
Being with his family was "indispensable" to Ieni's well-being, it said, adding that it hoped "the affection of his family will help him recover".
'Insult'
The ruling by the tribunal in Catania, in eastern Sicily, infuriated prosecutors and politicians alike, who said Ieni was a danger to society.
I wonder at this point what therapy is available to the relatives of those murdered by Mafia bosses whose hands are dripping with blood?
Senator Carlo Vizzini
"A Mafia boss in a high-security regime gets depressed and is first moved to an infirmary and then sent home in the belief that his family will help get over it," said Senator Vizzini, a member of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom (PdL) party.
"I wonder at this point what therapy is available to the relatives of those murdered by Mafia bosses whose hands are dripping with blood?" he asked.
Another Senator, Gianpaolo Vallardi, said it was an insult and likely to demoralise those risking their lives to fight the Mafia, known as the Cosa Nostra in Sicily. He called on the justice minister to intervene.
But Ieni's lawyer, Giuseppe Lipera, said it was wrong that his client had been in prison since being arrested three years ago.
Ieni was constantly reduced to tears and had lost (25kg) 55lbs in weight, he said.
The Sicilian Mafia and janitorial services might seem an unusual pairing, but it's at the root of nine years of litigation ruled on Friday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
The case began in 1999 after a U.S. Naval contracting officer awarded a $28 million maintenance case to Joint Venture Conserv. at the Navy's Sigonella Air Base near Catania, Italy. The janitorial services company was owned by Carmelo La Mastra, who had been indicted by Italian prosecutors in 1997 for his alleged role in a mafia scheme to win construction contracts on the base. A losing bidder, Impresa Construzioni, filed a protest over both the price and ethical questions surrounding the winner.
ROME (AP) — Local politicians, bankers and businessmen were among 57 people wanted Wednesday in connection with a mafia sweep across Italy targeting drug trafficking and extortion rackets, police and news reports said.
A local mayor and a tourism official from the southern region of Calabria were among those detained in early morning raids, the ANSA and Apcom news agencies reported.
The raids were focused on the southern region of Calabria — home of the 'ndrangheta organized crime syndicate — and Umbria, in central Italy, the carabinieri paramilitary police said.
The investigation, code-named Naos, uncovered an association between the 'ndrangheta and the Naples-based Camorra mob, with members working outside their traditional territories and alongside local criminal groups, a police statement said.
The ring focused on drug trafficking and extortion rackets, with money reinvested in construction projects, particularly hydroelectric utilities and tourism buildings in Calabria, reports said.
A former Mafia godfather, known by the nickname "the Pope", died in prison where he was serving multiple life sentences.
Michele Greco, 83, who had been ill for several weeks, was a contemporary of top gangsters Toto "The Beast" Riina and his successor as 'boss of bosses', Bernardo Provenzano.
Arrested in 1986 after several years on the run, Greco had been a member of the 'cupola', the Mafia's board of directors. He earned his nickname by being a conciliatory voice between rival Mafia factions.
The Italian state claims to have made great steps in recent years in cleaning up the Mafia, the crime organisation based in the island of Sicily.
Italian and US police arrested 77 suspected members last week after a three-year probe into drug trafficking and money laundering. The latest boss of bosses, Salvatore Lo Piccolo, was arrested in November after nearly a quarter century on the run.
On Wednesday Italian police arrested 60 people suspected of involvement with the 'Ndrangheta and Camorra crime gangs - the equivalent of the Mafia based on the southern Italian mainland.
The police said they were breaking up a drugs and money laundering "joint venture" between the two gangs.
The killing of six Italians in the German city of Duisburg has thrust into the spotlight the shadowy world of the 'Ndrangheta, whose tentacles have spread far beyond their rural origins in Calabria, in southern Italy.
The six men, one of whom was reported to be only 16 years old, were sprayed with machine gun bullets moments after they left a pizzeria in the western German city.
Based on the strong blood ties between interlinked families, membership of the 'Ndrangheta - which means "Honoured Society" - is believed to number in the tens of thousands.
"It is disturbing - firstly because of the sheer number of dead," the acting director of Italy's National Anti-Mafia bureau, Carmelo Petralia, told the BBC news website.
The Italian 'Ndrangheta crime circle works in cooperation with Bulgarian organized crime groups, a report of the Italian anti-mafia directorate states, as cited by Giornale di Calabria newspaper.
The report warns of the 'Ndrangheta's constantly growing power and its links with Bulgarian crime bosses, who are backed by the even more powerful Russian mafia.
The report comes just two days after six Italians were shot dead near a train station in Duisburg, western Germany. All of them are believed to be members of the 'Ndrangheta crime group based in Calbabria. Police believe the motive for the killings is the result of a feud stemming from the Italian town of San Luca.
Ever more often Italian mafia bosses go to court together with Bulgarians and this is just one of the many examples that prove the links between Bulgaria and the Calabrian mafia, the report says.
DUISBURG, Germany (AFP) - Six Italian men were shot dead here on Wednesday as a powerful mafia clan exported a bloody vendetta to Germany.
Italy's Interior Minister Giuliano Amato said the victims, who ranged from 16 to 38 years old and included two brothers, were caught up in a feud between mafia families in the Calabria region of southern Italy.
A police patrol alerted by a passerby discovered four of the victims in a Volkswagen Golf hire car and two in an Opel delivery van, which were parked near the central rail station of the industrial western city of Duisburg early Wednesday.
Heinz Sprenger, the officer leading the German police investigation, said all six victims had "multiple gunshot wounds".
"These men were shot at indiscriminately," he told a press conference.
Sprenger said some of the victims showed signs of life when they were found by police, but although one survived longer than the others, doctors were unable to resuscitate him.
Police said the men had been celebrating the 18th birthday of one of the victims in a pizza restaurant near the scene of the shooting where some of the men worked.
Italian police have arrested 14 people in Palermo in an anti-mafia operation, local media reported Friday.
The operation uncovered close ties between local Cosa Nostra families and the Mafia in the United States.
The 14 included businessmen, extortionists and municipal employees, most of them face charges of criminal conspiracy, extortion and public contract rigging, the report said.
A reputed Mafia man considered one of Italy's most dangerous criminals was arrested by police.
The fugitive, Franco Franzese, 43, was arrested in the Sicilian city of Palermo, police said. He is believed to be an aide to Salvatore Lo Piccolo, considered with Matteo Messina Denaro to be the new head of the Mafia.
"This is an important demonstration of the efficiency of the police and the state's ability to oppose the evil plant of criminality with force," Justice Minister Clemente Mastella said in a statement.
Three people were arrested with Franzese and could face charges of aiding and abetting, police said.
Franzese was on an Interior Ministry list of Italy's most dangerous criminals and has been condemned to life in prison.
Ansa news agency said Franzese was being sought for Mafia association.
ROME — The hit was classic mob. There were shots to the face and to the abdomen. The killers used a Lupara, a sawn-off shotgun that is the traditional weapon of choice for Mafia executions. The target was Giuseppe Lo Baido, 36. He was gunned down on July 13, near his house outside Palermo, Sicily.
The Italian police are not treating the Lo Baido case as just another mess to be scraped off the street in the heartland of the Cosa Nostra, the name for the Mafia's Sicilian branch. His was one of four recent killings. All of the victims were thought to be members of the Corleone family.
Some of Italy's Mafia prosecutors think the killings could be the start of a new internecine war. "The homicides of recent weeks may be a sign of a potential war between the families," said Maurizio De Lucia, the Palermo state prosecutor.
Aug. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Organized-crime groups in Italy are a ``dangerous and pervasive'' priority of the security services, as Mafia-type groups from eastern Europe infiltrate the country's economy, the Italian spy agency said.
``Organized crime still represents a major threat,'' said a report published today in Rome by Cesis, the country's central spy agency. ``The web of corruption, intimidation, public mismanagement, violence and `omerta' -- which in all likelihood is behind the recent `garbage emergency' in Naples -- is but a part of a more threatening criminal globalization.'' Omerta is a code of silence.
Local officials in Naples and its suburbs are struggling to cope with months of uncollected garbage on the streets. Yesterday, the Sicilian Mafia burned to the ground a hardware and paint store that refused to pay extortion in the city of Palermo, and there have been a spate of murders in Sicily tied to an internal power struggle after Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano was captured last year.
Unhappy with the way things have been going here in the United States? Tired of scandal and corruption, and people saying the republic has gone the way of ancient Rome? Well things could be much worse. All you have to do is look at present day Rome, and Italy, where the mafia with its friends in business and government still forms one of the country's biggest enterprises. Prime Minister Romano Prodi has called the mafia "the constant reality."
For well over a century, the mafia has endured by forming relationships with people in power, playing a role in who gets elected, and developing a web of protection that reaches into the highest levels of the Italian government. And as correspondent Steve Kroft reports, there is no better example than the "Phantom of Corleone."
ROME – Police in southern Italy arrested 60 people on Tuesday in a swoop on the local mafia known as the 'Ndrangheta, suspecting them of crimes ranging from smuggling drugs and illegal immigrants to national insurance fraud.
The 'Ndrangheta, based in Calabria south of Naples, has outgrown its more famous Sicilian counterpart, the Cosa Nostra, thanks to clan loyalties ensured by blood relationships and arranged marriages.
A police spokesman said the 'Ndrangheta clan targeted by the police operation were also believed to have backed candidates for regional and provincial councils, showing how deeply they influenced local politics and business.
"According to the estimate we have come up with, six million euros would have shortly been taken from the national insurance funds," the spokesman said.
Anti-mafia prosecutors were also investigating those held for crimes including extortion, loan-sharking, illegal transport and possession of weapons and explosives.
The local Mafia in Naples has forced a priest who preached against crime to quit the city.
The Camorra, which masterminds a significant part of Europe's cocaine trade, threatened to kill Father Luigi Merola if he did not leave.
The final warning came in the form of a photograph of the priest with a bullet entering his mouth. Father Merola was in charge of the parish of Forcella, a violent neighbourhood in the heart of the city which is controlled by the crime gang. He has had a police escort for the past three years and last week, a 30-year-old man was shot just outside the priest's church.
Although he was popular in the area for his fight against organised crime, the local curia finally decided that it was too dangerous for Father Merola to remain.
He has been given a job at the Italian Bishops' Conference in Rome.
In his final Mass a few weeks ago, Father Merola told worshippers that criminals could not stop "spring" from arriving in Naples and it would be "a season of peace".
Father Merola said he was not being forced out by fear. He said he reached the decision with Cardinal Sepe, the Archbishop of Naples.
"One phase is closed, a new one begins," he said. "But I will continue to fight against crime." Meanwhile, in Palermo, four shopkeepers won a battle against two Mafia dons demanding protection money.
Before Clement Santoro put a gun to a man's head, broke his fingers and bloodied his nose, the accused mob associate had dinner with other members of the Genovese organized crime syndicate at a West Palm Beach restaurant called -- fittingly -- Soprano's, a prosecutor said Monday.
According to state records, the restaurant, named after the HBO television drama about a New Jersey crime family, is owned by Renaldi Ruggiero of Palm Beach Gardens, the man prosecutors say ran South Florida operations for the Genovese family.
BARCELONA — Spanish police arrested the head of the Naples mafia in the fashionable resort town of Sitges on Monday.
Carmine Rispoli, 38, widely considered to be the top figure in the Mafia-like Di Lauro clan, is one of the most powerful factions within the Camorra organized crime group from the Naples area.
Police said Rispoli had been sought for four years by Italian authorities, who in April issued a Europe-wide arrest order for him for various activities connected with organized crime, including drug trafficking.
He was taken into custody in the northeastern town of Sitges.
The police arrested at least 45 people in what they said was a operation aimed at thwarting an all-out Mafia war of succession after the capture of Bernardo Provenzano, the boss of all bosses of the Sicilian Mafia, in April. They said that the suspects, including the heads of 13 Mafia families in Sicily, made up the support network that had allowed Mr. Provenzano to remain on the run for 43 years and that the sweep came after wiretaps pointed to a possible Mafia war of succession.
A top boss from the Sicilian Mafia arrested in the Czech Republic last year will be extradited to Italy, an official said Wednesday.
Justice Minister Pavel Nemec decided Wednesday that Luigi Putrone will be extradited to Italy, spokesman Petr Dimun said.
Putrone, 44, was arrested in December as he was leaving a bakery in the Czech town of Usti nad Labem, near the German border.
