A reputed crime syndicate boss was yesterday arrested in Naples as she was about to board a flight to Spain, Italian authorities said.
Italian Minister of the Interior Luciana Lamorgese praised the arrest of Maria Licciardi, 70, by Carabinieri officers on orders of Naples prosecutors.
Personnel from the Carabinieri’s special operations unit were not immediately available for comment, but the Carabinieri press office posted a dispatch by the Italian news agency ANSA saying that Licciardi was nabbed at Rome’s Ciampino Airport as she checked in luggage for a flight to Spain.
Investigators have alleged that Licciardi ran extortion rackets as head of the Licciardi Camorra crime syndicate.
“She didn’t bat an eyelash when the officers blocked her and served the warrant signed by the Naples prosecutors’ office,” ANSA reported.
When first arrested in 2001, after she was stopped as she drove a vehicle near Naples, Licciardi had figured among Italy’s list of top 30 wanted fugitives. In 2009, she was released from prison after serving time for convictions of crimes attributed to the mafia.
Nicknamed a piccirella, or “a little one,” by mobsters for her petite build, Licciardi was one of the victors in a long-running blood feud between alliances of syndicates that left Naples littered nearly daily with bodies earlier this century, prosecutors said.
In a 2009 interview, prosecutors described Licciardi as a true madrina, or “godmother,” in the Camorra syndicate, saying that her brother was a clan boss and she made decisions for the crime family along with other clan bosses.
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