Verdict significant blow to ‘Ndrangheta mafia which monopolizes European cocaine trade
Nov 20,
2023. Posted by Balkan Periscope - Hellas
Lamezia
Terme.
An Italian court on Monday convicted and sentenced around 200 mobsters and their white-collar helpers, the culmination of a historic, nearly three-year trial against Calabria’s notorious ‘Ndrangheta mafia.
For over an hour and a half, the president of the court in southern Vibo Valentia, Brigida Cavasino, read out the names of the guilty and their sentences, which ranged from 30 years to a few months, as defendants incarcerated in prisons across the country watched via videolink.
Prosecutors
had asked for guilty verdicts against 322 accused mafia members operating in
the Calabrian province and their white-collar collaborators, requesting 30
years for a dozen of the ‘Ndrangheta’s most seasoned decision-makers. About 200
were convicted and sentenced on Monday, although only four top members received
this maximum penalty. The remainder were either formally or effectively
acquitted.
One of the
trial’s most high-profile defendants, 70-year-old former parliamentarian and
defense lawyer Giancarlo Pittelli, accused of being a fixer for the mafia,
received 11 years, short of the 17 years prosecutors requested. A few dozen
family members sat in the back of the vast, narrow courtroom, squinting at the
television screens for a glimpse of their loved ones, and occasionally crying
out with joy over a light sentence. The verdicts — which can be appealed twice
— capped Italy’s largest mafia trial in decades and mark the most significant
blow to date against one of the world’s most powerful organized crime
syndicates.
Stranglehold over territory
The
‘Ndrangheta has moved beyond its roots in the poor southern Italian region of
Calabria to exercise near-monopoly on the European cocaine trade and is now
found in more than 40 countries worldwide. Since the trial began in January
2021, the court has heard thousands of hours of testimony, including from more
than 50 former mafia operatives turned state witnesses.
They and
others have detailed countless examples of the ‘Ndrangheta’s brutality and its
stranglehold over the local population. They include carrying out violent
ambushes, shaking down business owners, rigging public tenders, stockpiling
weapons, collecting votes or passing kickbacks to the powerful.
The accused
were members or affiliates of the top ‘Ndrangheta “clan” in Vibo Valentia, one
of the region’s many economically depressed rural areas where the mafia has
suffocated the local economy, infiltrated public institutions and terrorized
its people for decades. The territory’s undisputed boss, Luigi “The Supreme”
Mancuso, 69, was cut from the defendants list last year to be tried separately.
‘We don’t want you’
Hundreds of
lawyers and a few dozen members of the media attended the sentencing Monday in
the heavily secured courtroom bunker in the Calabrian city of Lamezia Terme.
Also present was Rocco Mangiardi, 67, a local businessman and one of the first
to denounce the ‘Ndrangheta for extortion before a judge in 2009.
Mangiardi,
who has lived under police escort ever since, lamented the low turnout for the
trial’s most important moment. “This courtroom should be filled with citizens,”
he told AFP. “To show the judges that we’re on their side and then to tell the
mafiosi with their presence ‘We don’t want you.’”
The
‘Ndrangheta of Vibo Valentia — whose members have nicknames straight out of
Hollywood like “The Wolf”, “Fatty”, “Sweetie” and “Lamb Thigh” — were
entrenched in the local economy, feared by business owners and farmers, and
protected by white-collar professionals and politicians.
Informants
— a relatively rare phenomenon within the ‘Ndrangheta due to blood ties between
members — recounted how weapons were hidden in cemetery chapels and ambulances
used to transport drugs, and municipal water supplies diverted to marijuana
crops. Those who opposed the mafia found dead puppies, dolphins or goat heads
dumped on their doorsteps, sledgehammers taken to store fronts or cars torched.
Less lucky were those beaten or fired at — or those whose bodies were never
found.
AFP