Family contract

Italian police decapitate Sicilian mafia

Prosecutors and police in Sicily continue to break the traditions of Italian cinema, providing a “happy ending” for the scriptwriters of future films dedicated to the national pastime of the inhabitants of the southern Apennines - the fight against the mafia. From now on, filmmakers can honestly avoid sacrificing the main character from among honest judges or law enforcement officers, like Commissar Corado Catani, unforgettable for Soviet viewers, played by Michele Placido, but end films with shots of literally batches of “godfathers” being sent to prison. And these shots, apparently, can also touch the viewer’s heartstrings. In any case, the residents of Palermo welcomed the completion of the special operation last weekend with tears of joy and stormy actions of delight, during which Salvatore Lo Piccolo and his son Sandro were detained - the people who stood at the top of the criminal pyramid of Cosa Nostra. The elder Lo Piccolo, considered the “godfather” of the Sicilian mafia, was a fugitive for a quarter of a century.

The law enforcement officers themselves and the Italian authorities are trying to prove that this pyramid, if not collapsing before our eyes, is then showing cracks. To date, there are already more than 300 Sicilian mafia bosses in prisons across the country, arrested mainly in recent years. The previous head of the mafia clans, the legendary Bernardo Provenzano, who had been wanted for more than 40 years, was detained just a year and a half ago, in April 2006. In April this year he was sentenced to 12 life sentences. According to the intelligence services, it was his place that was taken by Salvatore Lo Piccolo, but he was not allowed to really enjoy the fullness of power. As Newsru.com reports with reference to the Italian La Repubblica, recently the police managed to persuade a number of mafia representatives to cooperate, which ultimately made it possible to decapitate one of the most disciplined criminal communities in the world.

True, outwardly at the time of their arrest, the main mafiosi looked quite caricatured for the 21st century: black leather jackets, gold chains around their necks, shiny Rolexes (in the summer, in the house belonging to the mafia treasurer, a stock of 15 watches from this company was discovered), a modest cottage, for some reason called a villa - in general, typical rising racketeers of Russia in the early 90s. On the other hand, while our newly minted mafiosi exchanged racketeering for raiding, and leather jackets for formal suits, the Lo Piccolo family remained faithful to their once chosen profession. Racketeering remains one of the main incomes of the Sicilian mafia to this day, and joining the “Goodbye Bribe” program, which provides for a public renunciation of protection fees, requires civic and personal courage from local entrepreneurs.

Having headed the mafia, 65-year-old Salvatore Lo Piccolo tried to turn back the clock and prove that all these “clean hands” operations that are invented in Rome have nothing to do with Sicilian reality. La Repubblica notes that, together with his son, who was put on the wanted list eight years ago for a double murder, the new “godfather” literally tried with fire and sword to destroy the illusions of local businessmen who, after Provenzano’s arrest, felt their necks and wallets free from ropes mafia. Arsons, terrorist attacks, threats - all this, combined with an arsenal of weapons found in one of the houses belonging to the clan, proved that, as one of the Palermo officials put it, “their intentions were not at all peaceful.”

Together with the Lo Piccolo family, two more major mafiosi were detained near Palermo. The governor of Sicily, Salvatore Cuffaro, has already stated that this event, and what’s more, it happened on the day of remembrance of the victims of the mafia, should be “a mortal blow for Cosa Nostra. Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, Interfax reports, called the arrest of the “godfathers” “a success for the state and all honest citizens.” It is noteworthy that Prodi’s supporters argue that it was with his election that the fight against the mafia entered an active stage. In the sense that under Silvio Berlusconi, only ordinary members of Cosa Nostra were imprisoned, and during the years of Prodi’s premiership, the prison cells were replenished with mafia leaders.

Fedor SEREBRYANSKY