For Nicola Gratteri, the lead prosecutor in Italy’s largest anti-mafia trial in more than 30 years, the fight against the mob has always been a personal issue.
“I have known the mafia since I was a child because I was hitchhiking to school and I often saw dead bodies on the road,” he told reporters ahead of the opening yesterday of the landmark “maxi-trial.”
“I thought: ‘When I grow up, I want to do something so that this won’t happen again,’” he said.
Photo: Reuters
More than 350 alleged members and associates of the feared ’Ndrangheta crime syndicate are going on trial in Calabria, the heart of the organized crime group, accused of everything from murder to drug trafficking, money laundering and mafia association.
A call center in the town of Lamezia Terme was specially converted to host the proceedings, which Gratteri expects to last one year, but which many believe will stretch on for far longer.
The prosecutor grew up in Calabria, from where the ’Ndrangheta has extended its reach across all parts of the world, surpassing Sicily’s Cosa Nostra as Italy’s most fearsome crime syndicate.
“I know the ’Ndrangheta well from inside, because when I was a child I was at school with the children of mafia bosses,” Gratteri said.
“The kids I played with then became mobsters and then became drug traffickers. So, that’s why I’m familiar with the criminal philosophy, the way of thinking of the ’Ndrangheta members, and this helps in my work,” he added.
Gratteri said he felt “very confident” that his case would stand up in court, in what promises to be a long and complicated trial, with more than 900 witnesses just for the prosecution.
It focuses on the Mancuso, a clan based in the Vibo Valentia province, as well as on the politicians, lawyers, businesspeople and others accused of enabling them.
Gratteri, 62, has spent three decades under close police protection and is one of Italy’s most high-profile anti-mafia figures.
He is often compared with Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, star prosecutors who worked on Italy’s first mass trial against the mafia in the 1980s.
That trial, leading to hundreds of convictions, dealt a major blow to Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, but cost Falcone and Borsellino their lives as mobsters killed them both in retribution.
Gratteri said his anti-mafia efforts were being supported by the gradual breakdown of omerta, the mafia code of silence, among ordinary Calabrians.
“Over the last years we have gained a lot of credibility, a lot of trust. People have started to cooperate, the people are standing by us, are starting to believe in us,” he said.
A rogue overgrown sheep found roaming through regional Australia has been shorn of his 35kg fleece — a weight even greater than that of the famous New Zealand sheep Shrek, who was captured in 2005 after six years on the loose. The merino ram, dubbed Baarack by rescuers, was discovered wandering alone with an extraordinarily overgrown wool coat, and was promptly shorn to save his life. Kyle Behrend, from the Edgar’s Mission farm sanctuary, said that it appeared Baarack was “once an owned sheep” who had escaped. Merino sheep do not shed their fleece and need to be shorn at least annually, as
‘GRAVE CONCERN’: A critic of the government died immediately following his complaints of torture at the hands of security forces, a human rights group said Students on Friday clashed with police in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, as anger mounted at the death of a writer and government critic in a high-security jail. At least 18 police and an unknown number of protesters were injured in the clashes, authorities and witnesses said, amid international demands for an independent investigation into the death of Mushtaq Ahmed. An Agence France-Presse correspondent witnessed police using batons and firing tear gas at students who staged a torchlight march calling for “justice” near the University of Dhaka. At least six students who allegedly attacked security forces with torches were detained, police said. More protests were planned
DMZ SWIM: Over more than three hours, South Korean surveillance cameras caught him eight times and audible alarms sounded twice, but border guards did not notice A North Korean defector wore a diving suit and fins during a daring six-hour swim around one of the world’s most fortified borders and was only caught after apparently falling asleep, a Seoul official said. South Korean forces did not spot the man’s audacious exploit, despite his appearance several times on surveillance cameras after he landed and triggered alarms, drawing heavy criticism from media and opposition lawmakers. Even after his presence was noticed, the man — who used diving gear to make his way by sea around the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that divides the Korean Peninsula — was not caught for another
China, under growing global pressure over its treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang, is mounting an unprecedented and aggressive campaign to push back, including explicit attacks on women who have made claims of abuse. As allegations of human rights violations in Xinjiang mount, with a growing number of Western lawmakers accusing China of genocide, Beijing is focusing on discrediting the female Uighur witnesses behind reports of abuse. Chinese officials have named women, disclosed medical data and information on their fertility, and accused some of having affairs and one of having a sexually transmitted disease. Officials said that the information was evidence of bad character,
RSS