{"id":13065,"date":"2025-02-12T11:38:04","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T11:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/12\/italian-police-arrest-around-130-people-in-massive-mafia-crackdown\/"},"modified":"2025-02-12T11:38:04","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T11:38:04","slug":"italian-police-arrest-around-130-people-in-massive-mafia-crackdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/12\/italian-police-arrest-around-130-people-in-massive-mafia-crackdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Italian police arrest around 130 people in massive mafia crackdown"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rome (Reuters)<\/strong> \u2014 <\/strong>Around 130 people were arrested on Tuesday in a large-scale sting against the Sicilian mafia in Palermo, indicating that it has remained a significant criminal force despite setbacks in recent decades. <\/p>\n

\u201cCosa Nostra,\u201d the mafia syndicate based in and around Palermo, terrorized Italy in the 1980s and 1990s, but has since been overtaken as Europe\u2019s most powerful mob by the Calabrian \u2018Ndrangheta. <\/p>\n

The suspects apprehended on Tuesday were charged with various crimes, including drug trafficking, attempted murder, extortion, illegal online gambling and illegal possession of firearms, Carabinieri police said in a statement. <\/p>\n

Additional arrest warrants were issued for 33 suspects who were already in prison for other crimes. <\/p>\n

Investigations revealed that Palermo\u2019s mafia families coordinate their activities across the city and its province, like they used to in the golden days of Cosa Nostra, especially as regards drug trafficking, police said. <\/p>\n

They said inner city families had regained authority compared to the years in which they were dominated by a faction from Corleone – a town outside Palermo that was the birthplace of notorious bosses Toto Riina and Bernardo Provenzano. <\/p>\n

Modern-day bosses use modern technology to conduct their business, using encrypted mobile phones that are smuggled into prisons to allow jailed bosses to continue exercising their command, investigators said. <\/p>\n

Despite being weakened by law enforcement activities, Cosa Nostra continues to attract young people, the Carabinieri said, noting they documented one instance of a new recruit given \u201cmafia lessons\u201d by an older associate. <\/p>\n

The would-be mentor gave the young man \u201cspecific instructions, inviting him to take as an example his conduct towards people to be subjected to extortion, and advising him on how to relate with mafia leaders,\u201d the police statement said. <\/p>\n

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, writing on X, hailed Tuesday\u2019s arrests as inflicting \u201ca very hard blow to Cosa Nostra,\u201d and giving a clear signal that \u201cthe fight against the mafia has not stopped and will not stop.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rome (Reuters) \u2014 Around 130 people were arrested on Tuesday in a large-scale sting against the Sicilian mafia in Palermo, indicating that it has remained a significant criminal force despite setbacks in recent decades. \u201cCosa Nostra,\u201d the mafia syndicate based in and around Palermo, terrorized Italy in the 1980s and 1990s, but has since been <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13066,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}