52 Arrested in Anti-Mafia Operation Throughout Italy
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Italian police arrested 52 people on Monday in a major anti-mafia operation throughout the country.
The operation was ordered by the national anti-mafia investigative department (DIA), and started in the city of Taranto in the southern region of Puglia, targeting people affiliated with two powerful allied clans, D'Oronzo and De Vitis.
All people arrested were charged with mafia association, drug trafficking, murder, extortion, and armed robbery, Xinhua reported.
Police officers carried out arrests also in northern cities of Verona and Bergamo in the Calabria region, and in the city of Sassari in Sardinia. The targeted clans were believed to be strongly rooted in those areas as well, according to the regional DIA chief, prosecutor Cataldo Motta.
Among those arrested were the boss of De Vitis family, Nicola De Vitis, who had been already sentenced to 25 years in prison for killing a woman belonging to a rival clan. The man was currently serving a custodial sentence outside prison in Verona, after 18 years in jail.
With a new charge of murder, he was now accused of being the instigator of the killing of a rival mobster occurred last year.
Thirty-eight of the 52 people arrested were found in Taranto, the second largest city of Puglia where the targeted clans were based.
The mobsters were not believed to be affiliated with the local mafia organisation known as Sacra Corona Unita (SCU), however, but rather linked to the Neapolitan Camorra and the 'Ndrangheta mafia based in the Calabria region.
