An Italian court on Monday convicted more than 200 mobsters and their white-collar helpers, the culmination of a historic, nearly three-year trial against Calabria’s notorious ’Ndrangheta mafia.
For more than an hour and a half, Brigida Cavasino, president of the court in southern Vibo Valentia, steadily read out the names of the guilty and their sentences, which ranged from 30 years to a few months, as defendants incarcerated in prisons across the nation watched via videolink.
Prosecutors had asked for sentences totaling nearly 5,000 years for 322 accused mafia members operating in the Calabrian province of Vibo Valentia and their collaborators who have exercised a virtual stranglehold over the local population.
Photo: AFP
However, after a trial that lasted two years and nine months, the court doled out under half that total time, about 2,150 years collectively, with the convictions of 207 defendants. That included four seasoned members of the ’Ndrangheta each sentenced to three decades in jail.
The three-judge panel acquitted 131 defendants, including one whom prosecutors said controlled mafia activities within the prison and another accused of helping commandeer a public road and adjoining private land to use for grazing sheep.
Underscoring the ’Ndrangheta’s close ties with the powerful, one of the trial’s most high-profile defendants was 70-year-old former parliamentarian and defense lawyer Giancarlo Pittelli, accused of being a fixer for the mafia. He received 11 years, short of the 17 years prosecutors had requested.
A few dozen family members sat in the back of the vast, narrow courtroom, squinting at the television screens for a glimpse of their loved ones in prison, and occasionally crying out with joy over a light sentence.
The verdicts — which can be appealed twice — capped Italy’s largest mafia trial in decades and, despite Monday’s acquittals, mark the most significant blow to date against one of the world’s most powerful organized crime syndicates.
Giuseppe Borrello, the local representative for anti-mafia association Libera, said the verdicts showed that prosecutors’ efforts were working, even if they fell short for all suspects.
“The road is still long, but it’s been charted out, that’s the most important thing,” Borrello said.
“The strong message it [the collective verdict] sends is that the sense of impunity that has very often been felt in our territory is gone,” he said.
The ’Ndrangheta has flourished beyond its roots in the poor region of Calabria, at the toe of Italy’s boot, to exercise a near-monopoly on the European cocaine trade, and is now found in more than 40 countries worldwide.
Since the trial began in January 2021, the court has heard thousands of hours of testimony, including from more than 50 former mafia operatives turned state witnesses, detailing countless examples of the ’Ndrangheta’s brutality and its iron grip on the territory.
STATE OF THE NATION: The legislature should invite the president to deliver an address every year, the TPP said, adding that Lai should also have to answer legislators’ questions The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday proposed inviting president-elect William Lai (賴清德) to make a historic first state of the nation address at the legislature following his inauguration on May 20. Lai is expected to face many domestic and international challenges, and should clarify his intended policies with the public’s representatives, KMT caucus secretary-general Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) said when making the proposal at a meeting of the legislature’s Procedure Committee. The committee voted to add the item to the agenda for Friday, along with another similar proposal put forward by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The invitation is in line with Article 15-2
PLAN: Nations would receive US$5m a year if they could advance Taiwan’s international participation, diversify supply chains away from China or counter Beijing’s influence The US House of Representatives Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the US and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on Friday introduced a bill that would approve US$120 million to be spent on supporting Taiwan’s international space and tackling coercion by China. The bipartisan legislation — the Taiwan Allies Fund Act — was proposed ahead of the inauguration of president-elect William Lai (賴清德) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on May 20. The committee said in a statement that the bill “strengthens Taiwan’s global network of friends by authorizing [US]$120 million over three years for the State Department and USAID [US Agency
SELF-SUFFICIENCY: The project would only be the beginning, as Taiwan needs at least 120 satellites to ensure uninterrupted communication, Wu Tsung-tsong said The Taiwan Space Agency (TASA) yesterday said it plans to launch six low Earth orbit satellites starting in 2026 as part of the government’s plan to boost the resilience of the nation’s communications. The development of the technology gained attention after Ukrainians were able to access the Internet through Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) CEO Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite service, despite their infrastructure being severely damaged in the war with Russia. Two of the satellites would be built by the government, while four would involve cooperation between TASA and private contractors. “Over the past 30 years, the satellite technology in Taiwan has
‘DIGITAL SOLIDARITY’: Taiwan, the US, Japan, Australia and New Zealand are to install and operate a cable that would connect up to 100,000 people in the Pacific Islands Taiwan, the US, Japan, Australia and New Zealand are working together to install undersea cables as a demonstration of digital solidarity, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday. Blinken talked about the cooperation in a speech he delivered at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. He said that the US International Cyberspace and Digital Strategy launched by the US Department of State “treats digital solidarity as our North Star.” “Solidarity informs our approach not only to digital technologies, but to all key foundational technologies,” Blinken said. Under the strategy, the US is to work with international partners “to shape the design, development,