After years of investigation, mountains of evidence and hundreds of suspects, Italy's plucky anti-mafia prosecutor Nicola Gratteri is gearing up for a "historic" court battle against the country's powerful 'Ndrangheta clan.
The
first salvos in a court battle were fired Friday as a preliminary hearing
against 'Ndrangheta members opened in the Italian capital, in a case not seen
since the days of the "Maxiprocesso" trial against the Sicilian Cosa
Nostra in the mid-1980s.
Gratteri,
62, who has spent three decades under close police protection, is hoping to
send more than 450 suspected clan members to jail for belonging to a criminal
gang that allegedly built its fortunes and sinister reputation on extortion,
money laundering, kidnapping, drug trafficking and so-called vendettas.
"It's
a war," Gratteri told AFP shortly after the preliminary hearing concluded
in Rome in the case against Italy's only mafia group with tentacles on every
continent.
"We
are talking about violence, about death," added the prosecutor, based in
the southern Italian town and 'Ndrangheta stronghold of Catanzaro, where he
lives with constant death threats.
Describing
the case as "historic", Gratteri believed it to be the most important
in Italy's battle against mobsters since the "Maxi" trial, which
eventually saw hundreds of Cosa Nostra members convicted.
Those
hearings however were marred by violence including a mafia hit on its
best-known judge and prosecuting magistrate Giovanni Falcone, murdered with his
wife and three police officers in 1992.
When
formalities conclude in Rome and a fortified courthouse in built in Calabria,
the hearings are due to move to Italy's southern region where no less than 600
lawyers and 200 civil parties will be present.
'Tonnes
of cocaine'
Hundreds
of 'Ndrangheta crime bosses, underbosses and "soldiers" were arrested
in December in one of the biggest police raids against the crime syndicate in
years.
The
swoop extended as far as Germany, Bulgaria and Switzerland and netted a former
MP and the head of the Calabrian mayors' association among others.
Charges
range from usury to murder, often aggravated by Italy's Article 416-bis
criminal code against taking part in mafia-type associations.
For many
years perceived to be the poorer cousin to better-known mob groups such as the
Cosa Nostra and Napoli's Camorra, the 'Ndrangheta has since surpassed them to
become Italy's most powerful crime organisation.
With its
name stemming from unknown origins, but said to have been derived from Greek
meaning to exalt virility and courage, the 'Ndrangheta today is a modern and
feared crime gang.
It
controls part of the international cocaine trafficking network with footholds
in New York, Colombia and Brazil, has infiltrated the construction industry,
runs European-based funds and even funeral contracts, now boosted by the
Covid-19 pandemic.
"The
'Ndrangheta is much feared for its ferocity and its cruelty. Yet at the same
time it's very modern -- and ready to flood Europe's markets with tonnes of
cocaine," the grizzled prosecutor said.
According
to Italian justice figures, there are some 20,000 'Ndrangheta members globally,
running a business that generates an annual turnover of more than 50 billion
euros ($59 billion).
'Mirror of society'
The
upcoming trial against the 'Ndrangheta appears to have been a severe blow, yet
it could not be compared to the Palermo-based Maxi trial which opened in 1986,
criminologist Anna Sergi said.
"During
the Cosa Nostra Maxi trial they brought down the heads of all the major
families, in this operation it is not the case," according to Sergi, an
associate professor at the University of Essex.
"Some
major people... will go on trial but I would not go and say that this will have
the same significance, should they all be jailed," Sergi told AFP.
Made
famous by Hollywood, the mafia first showed up in Sicily about 150 years ago
and has since firmly been established through Italy.
Through
the years it has diversified, modernised and become highly sophisticated.
But at
the same time law enforcement hasd also made leaps thanks to international
cooperation, sharing digital files and new technology such as thermal cameras,
drones and cyber surveillance -- and the commitment of prosecutors like
Gratteri.
However
law enforcement has never completely managed to cut down the hydra in a country
where complicity can be found "at all levels of state
administration," Sergi said.
"The
mafias are not external bodies to our otherwise well-functioning society, they
are the mirror of our functioning," added Gratteri, quoting the late judge
Falcone.
"Italy
is unable to admit it, it makes an enemy of it, forgetting that it (the mafia)
is part of who we are," he said.
"In
each of us there is a little 'Ndranghetist'," said Gratteri.
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/italian-prosecutor-set-for-historic-anti-mafia-court-battle/ar-BB18XQwh
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