Ah, news on the Sicilian Mafia, one of my favorite subjects.
Whatcha gonna do when they come for you? (courtesy of AFP/Getty images)
According to CNN’s newsblog, in mid -December Italian paramilitary police conducted a large scale operation against the Sicilian mafia in Palermo, with 1200+ Carabinieri officers carrying out more than 90 arrests and “‘decapitating’ the organization’s leadership structure.”
Afterward, Colonel Teo Luzzi issued a lengthy statement about the goals of this operation. Presumably referring to the Mafia leadership which was targeted, he commented,
Their aim was to reconstitute the Sicilian Mafia’s decision-making body, known as the ‘Commissione,’ which was disbanded in the early 1990s following the arrest of the top boss Toto Riina.
“Since then the Mafia didn’t really have a decision making body,” Luzzi said, “and with these arrests we decapitated the top brass of the Palermo Mafia.”
More from the CNN newsblog article:
The Commissione was the executive body of the Mafia, uniting the most powerful bosses of the Mafia clans operating in Sicily. It was the Commissione that decided to carry out the killings of Italy’s top anti-Mafia magistrates in May and July 1992.
The high-profile killings prompted the Italian government to deploy the army in Sicily to fight the Mafia, and Toto Riina was arrested in January 2003.
Sicily’s most wanted Mafioso, Matteo Messina Denaro, was not among the arrested.
Palermo officials said charges would include association with the Mafia, extortion, and arms and drug trafficking.
View full story here.
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