Italy police arrest 112 mafia members involved in drug trafficking
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The Italian police conducted a major operation against a drug trafficking mafia gang, resulting in the arrests of over 100 criminals.
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Two city police officers patrol the Navigli area, a popular evening spot of restaurants and pubs bordering canals in Milan, Italy, Thursday, October 22, 2020. (AP)
The Italian military police, also known as Carabinieri, relayed that its forces carried out a major operation resulting in 112 arrests among several drug trafficking gangs in Sicily on Tuesday.
The operation was carried out after three different investigations that simultaneously and collectively dismantled multiple criminal organizations involved in drug trafficking across various cities and districts in Sicily. These organizations also had connections with Calabrian criminal groups operating in Campania, Lombardy, and abroad, according to a police statement.
Law enforcement authorities arrested 85 individuals early Tuesday, with an additional 27 placed under house arrest, the statement noted.
The arrested individuals face charges including drug possession, distribution, and sale, laundering of criminal proceeds, illegal possession and modification of weapons, extortion, and other offenses. During the operation, police seized property valued at four million euros.
Italy catches most wanted Mafia boss ending a 30-year manhunt
Italian mafias have rampaged the country and sent its police forces into a constant chase to capture the criminals.
In January 2023, Italian police arrested one of the Sicilian Mafia's most well-known bosses, Matteo Messina Denaro, a cold-hearted operator who had been hiding for 30 years.
The 60-year-old was caught after a visit to a health clinic in the Sicilian capital Palermo, where he was getting treatment. Messina Denaro surrendered without dispute, according to officials.
Reports say that the man who once boasted that he could "fill a cemetery" with his victims, had been a leading figure in Cosa Nostra, the real-life Sicilian crime syndicate depicted in the Godfather movies.
When he was arrested, he was not armed, as per the prosecutors, and he seemed to be in good health, dressed well with luxury accessories, including a watch that officials valued at up to 35,000 euros ($37,872).
Messina Denaro's convictions included a life sentence given in absentia in 2020 for the 1992 murder of anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone.
