The unprecedented settling of scores in Germany between rival clans of Italy's 'ndrangheta crime syndicate shows how the group's small-town business and vendettas have gone global, analysts and Italian officials said.
Six Italians were gunned down execution-style on Wednesday in the industrial German city of Duisburg in what officials said was the latest chapter in a local 'ndrangheta feud that erupted in the tiny Calabrian town of San Luca in 1991.
"What happened was a qualitative leap" in the 'ndgrangheta's operations, Deputy Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti said. "That this feud finds a second chapter outside the territory in which these clans move, and beyond the national borders," is unprecedented and worrisome.
The Interior Ministry said earlier this year that the 'ndrangheta had "confirmed itself as the most competitive criminal" movement in Italy and one that was able to exert the "most destructive potential" of all the other crime syndicates, more dangerous than Sicily's Cosa Nostra or the Neapolitan Camorra.
But to date, their vendettas have stayed local -- primarily because they have been able to carry them out with impunity in Calabria, said Alexander Stille, author of the 1995 book Excellent Cadavers, about the Sicilian Mafia.
"Generally it's a lot easier to get away with murder in Calabria than in Germany," he said in a telephone interview from New York. "When the 'ndrangheta kill people in Calabria, they do it in broad daylight in a crowded place and there are no witnesses."
The 'ndrangheta's business, however, went global years ago -- and Italian investigators said Wednesday's massacre may have been more about financial turf than a settling of local Italian scores.
"With the 'ndrangheta, the motives aren't only about honor but above all interests -- money laundering and drug trafficking," assistant police chief Nicola Cavaliere told RAI state television.
Minniti said the 'ndrangheta's presence in Germany was well known and that for some time German police and prosecutors had been monitoring its economic activity in Germany.
Stille said that many of the 'ndrangheta clans had started out as poor, rural extortion groups with a purely local range, which got rich suddenly in the 1980s and 1990s because they were able to divert government money destined for development projects like a new steel plant, port and power plant.
"These groups went from being small-time local hoods into being crime groups in the same category as the Sicilians and the Neapolitans, and so it's only inevitable that as they began to make more money and have more money to reinvest, they were going to look overseas," he said.
The San Luca feud erupted in 1991 after members of one of the clans threw eggs toward members of the other during Carnival celebrations, leading to a fight, said Luciano Rindona, police commissioner of Bovalino, which covers the town of San Luca.
Since then, some 15 people have been killed, including Wednesday's victims, he said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion