For decades a ruthless mafia has ruled in southern Italy. Now the state is fighting back & More News Here

From the home windows of Vittoria Sicari’s top-floor residence in Vibo Marina, a village on the southern Italian coast, you may see the blue expanse of the Tyrrhenian Sea stretching out to the horizon. It’s a view Vittoria hasn’t seen in 23 years. Back then, she claims, her residence was stolen.

According to Vittoria, in the late 90s, as she was on the point of promote the property, a man attended the open home inspection. When he put in a proposal, all the different patrons out of the blue misplaced curiosity. It was the first trace of bother forward. But sensing her likelihood to make a fast sale, she accepted a holding deposit and agreed at hand over a set of keys so he may go inside to measure up.

Vittoria alleges the keys have been by no means returned. The man moved in along with his household with out paying for the residence and, over two decades later, he is nonetheless there. “He literally stole it,” she tells Foreign Correspondent, trying up at the flat from the road under, as somebody inside shuts a window towards the cool sea breeze. 

When Vittoria tried to get him evicted, she claims he was threatening. “This guy told me, ‘If you don’t stop persecuting me and my family — because this flat is mine, not yours — I’ll kill you.’”

For 15 years, no lawyer dared tackle her case. Police experiences went nowhere. When she finally defaulted on her mortgage, the financial institution stopped wanting confiscating the residence. “If this person is so powerful that even a bank and the state are afraid, what can an ordinary citizen like me do?”

The man was an alleged affiliate of considered one of the strongest ‘Ndrangheta mafia households in the space — the Mancusos. For decades, the ‘Ndrangheta — the Calabrian mafia — have ruled the southern Italian province of Vibo Valentia by violence and intimidation. Those who stand as much as them danger their lives, Vittoria says. Some disappear and are by no means discovered.

But now the Italian state is fighting back. An historic investigation has put greater than 300 folks on trial for the crime of belonging to, or aiding, the ‘Ndrangheta. Prosecutors have already secured 70 convictions for crimes together with cash laundering, mafia involvement and extortion. Italians are calling it the “trial of the century”. Hundreds extra instances are ready to be heard. 

“The state is regaining ground here,” says Giuseppe Borrello, an anti-mafia activist and Vibo Valentia native. He says the so-called “maxi-trial” has boosted perception in the state’s capacity to guard folks. After decades dwelling in worry and silence, many at the moment are talking out. “The number of people turning on the mafia has increased,” Borrello says. “[This] is new for Vibo Valencia. ‘Ndrangheta people themselves see the time is right to cooperate.”

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Vittoria Sicari, who has lastly secured a lawyer, is amongst these planning to present proof at the trial.

“Naturally, I’m afraid,” she says. “But if people don’t stand up … the ‘Ndrangheta will continue to extend its tentacles like an octopus, and we will never be liberated.”

The prosecutor speaking to dying

Nicola Gratteri, the prosecutor main the maxi-trial, has been on the mafia kill record for decades. For the previous 30 years he is been risking his life to place members of the ‘Ndrangheta behind bars. He lives underneath fixed police safety, a life he describes as a “cage”. 

To meet him, we’re advised to face on a road nook and wait. He arrives in a convoy of bulletproof black sedans, flanked by guards dressed in denims and hoodies, with handguns slung at their hips. Threats to Gratteri’s life have solely intensified since he began investigating the Mancuso household.

Calabrian born and bred, Gratteri is aware of his enemy effectively. He grew up in the hilltop village of Gerace, the place he went to high school with folks he would later put in jail. “I was lucky because I was born into a family made up of honest people,” he says. “Had I been born into another family, perhaps I’d be a mafia boss today.” Instead, he is the one they worry.

At the metropolis of Lamezia Terme, we arrive at “The Bunker”, a former name centre rebuilt as an unlimited courthouse. Soldiers from the Italian military stand guard outdoors with machine weapons. At 3,300 sq. metres, it is the greatest courtroom in the Western world, says Gratteri, with seating for over 1,000 folks. “The trial is big because the organisation is big.”

When Gratteri took over the chief prosecutor’s workplace in Catanzaro in 2016, he got down to dismantle the ‘Ndrangheta in the province of Vibo Valentia. The workplace he inherited was “dormant”, crammed with good prosecutors with a want for change, however missing braveness, he says. “They needed someone to act as a leader, someone to act as a battering ram.”

But breaking the ‘Ndrangheta is no small job. Once derided by mafia in different elements of Italy, it has remodeled into the nation’s strongest organised crime syndicate, with an estimated annual turnover of $80 billion. It controls round 80 per cent of Europe’s cocaine provide.

The ‘Ndrangheta’s power lies in its construction. It’s a confederation of lots of of households, with every clan controlling a territory referred to as a “locale”. They “control the breath, the heartbeat of a region,” says Gratteri. “Whatever happens in that territory, in that municipality, must pass the scrutiny of those families.”

These blood ties make the ‘Ndrangheta notoriously troublesome to penetrate. Turning on one’s personal will be a dying sentence. “The ‘Ndrangheta becomes the meaning of life,” says Gratteri. “We have several examples of blood relatives who have had to kill relatives to save the honour of the family and to protect the organisation.”

A state inside the state

What the prosecutors need to show in this trial is that one clan, the Mancusos, run a shadow energy construction in Vibo Valentia. The clan head, they allege, is Luigi Mancuso, the youngest of 11 youngsters. He denies all prices. “He’s a charismatic character,” says Gratteri, “who has rubbed shoulders with important people.”

Gratteri’s investigation goals to reveal how the Mancusos and their associates wield energy by corrupt politicians, attorneys, professionals, even the police. “We are talking about a state within the state,” he says.

In December 2019, after 4 years of wire-tapping and gathering proof, the Carabinieri — considered one of Italy’s nationwide police forces — arrested greater than 300 folks suspected of mafia involvement in a night-time raid. Three thousand officers from throughout Italy have been referred to as in to assist.

“Gratteri called all operation leaders into his office,” says Colonel Bruno Capece, the Carabinieri chief in cost of the operation. “He told us the operation would have to be brought forward. There had been leaks and there was a risk people might flee.”

The arrests have been a massive second for the group of Vibo Valentia. Thousands of individuals took to the streets in an outpouring of gratitude to the Carabinieri. “It was a unique event which broke a series of taboos,” says Colonel Capece. “The most beautiful thing is that the population experienced a sense of liberation.” 

It was a collective act of defiance towards the ‘Ndrangheta. But those that stand as much as them alone typically pay a heavy value.

The price of refusing to bow

In the hills close to the Calabrian village of Limbadi, surrounded by olive and citrus groves, Sara Scarpulla stands in a small nook of her farm. This plot of land has been at the centre of a 30-year feud which claimed the lifetime of her solely son. What’s hanging is how small it is; no greater than a lounge room. 

Limbadi is the birthplace of the Mancuso household. Populated by tight-knit households dedicated to their land, the group is fertile floor for the ‘Ndrangheta. Poor employment alternatives and a lack of infrastructure drive folks into the palms of the mafia, which fills the gaps left by the state. Others are coerced by threats and violence.

For years, Sara watched as the Mancusos swallowed up the farms neighbouring her property. “We are surrounded by the Mancusos,” she says, pointing to the patchwork of groves in the surrounding hills. “Taken from people. They never paid.” 

But Sara refused to give up her land. Four years in the past, the feud turned lethal. Her son Matteo Vinci, a biologist and former military officer, was serving to out on the farm when he went to get into the household automobile along with his father Francesco. A bomb exploded. 

Sara remembers speeding down the laneway to assist, however there was nothing she may do. Tongues of fireplace have been engulfing the automobile. “It was terrible,” she says. “To see his father burning there and to know that my son was inside the car.”

Francesco survived however Matteo didn’t.

Last December, Rosaria Mancuso, the niece of Luigi Mancuso, was sentenced to life in jail for ordering the automobile bombing. Sara says the violence was an act of punishment.

In a city not removed from Limbadi, Carmine Zappia additionally came upon simply how expensive it may be to interrupt freed from the mafia’s internet. He discovered himself at the mercy of the Mancusos when he may now not make repayments on his furnishings store in Nicotera.

Luigi Mancuso’s brother, Antonio Mancuso, was despatched in as a debt collector. He demanded Carmine pay 5,000 euros a month. “From the boss’s words, I understood that there would be no end to the payments,” he says. 

When Carmine may now not afford to pay, he reported Antonio Mancuso to the Carabinieri. It was a choice that ruined his life. “The town reacted badly,” Carmine says. “Since we all know each other, and most people are related, I think more people side with the boss.”

He now wants around-the-clock police safety. “Before I was a prisoner of the ‘Ndrangheta, I had no freedom of movement,” he says. “Now with protection, I have become a prisoner of the state. But it is always better to have Carabinieri following me than mafiosi.”

Carmine says it is vital to finish the cycle of violence that retains Vibo Valencia in a state of worry, however that may solely occur if sufficient folks converse up. “Perhaps it will really end,” he says. “If there are many of us, we do not have to walk with protection.”

Cracking the ‘Ndrangheta

The key query hanging over the maxi-trial is whether or not going after one ‘Ndrangheta household is sufficient to carry lasting change. With territory and energy cut up amongst lots of of clans, the ‘Ndrangheta has proved proof against previous efforts to stamp it out. 

Milan-based prosecutor Alessandra Dolci, who has been investigating the ‘Ndrangheta for 20 years, led her personal maxi-trial which revealed the internal workings of the organisation.

“The ‘Ndrangheta doesn’t have a commander-in-chief,” she says. “But it has a sort of leadership council, which rules on the mafia’s national strategies. It’s made up of people who are elected to this coordinating body ever year.”

It means when one household will get into bother with the regulation, one other stands able to take its place, she says. Dolci believes trials alone cannot defeat the ‘Ndrangheta.

It’s a criticism Nicola Gratteri is conscious of. But he says it is in the end as much as civil society to “occupy those empty spaces straight away”.

For Gratteri, there is not any different however to push forward with the maxi-trial, even at nice price to his personal freedom. “If I were to stop today, I would feel like a coward,” he says. “And for me, it doesn’t make sense to live like a coward.”

Watch The Magistrate Vs The Mob is now out there on YouTube and iview.

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