Yahoo – AFP,
Ella Ide, 18 Nov 2014
Rome (AFP) - Secret mafia initiation rites have been caught on camera for the first time by Italian police, who on Tuesday arrested 40 suspected gangsters in raids across the north of the country.
Rome's
National Anti-Mafia headquarters on February 11, 2014 (AFP Photo/
Filippo
Monteforte)
|
Rome (AFP) - Secret mafia initiation rites have been caught on camera for the first time by Italian police, who on Tuesday arrested 40 suspected gangsters in raids across the north of the country.
The
arrests, on charges of criminal association, illegal arms sales and extortion,
followed a two-year investigation using wire-taps and hidden cameras in
locations known to be frequented by mobsters, police said.
"For
the first time the swearing-in ceremonies have been recorded live," Milan
prosecutor Ilda Boccassini told journalists at a press conference following
raids which saw 37 people landed behind bars and another three placed under
house arrest.
Italian
prosecutor Ilda Boccassini
gestures during a press conference
in Milan on
December 1, 2011 (AFP
Photo/Giuseppe Aresu)
|
Those
arrested are believed to belong to three clans based near Milan but affiliated
with the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, an organised crime group made up of networks of
hundreds of family gangs even more feared and secretive than the Sicilian
Mafia.
Police said
the arrests were fresh proof of the deadly southern group's expansion into the
rich industrial north of the country. Those in handcuffs include a 17-year old
boy and boss Giuseppe Larosa, known by the nickname "Peppe the Cow,"
according to Italian media reports.
The video
and audio recordings revealed the swearing in of 'Ndrangheta mobsters to an
elite membership known as "Santa".
New members
swore allegiance "in the silence of the night and under the light of the
stars and splendour of the moon" to "safeguard my wise
brothers".
Bullet
with your name on it
An unnamed
boss leading the rite in police videos published on Italian newspaper websites
can be heard telling the new Santa that they are now expected to be their own
executioners should they stray from the 'Ndrangheta's code.
"From
now on it will not be other men who judge you, you will judge yourselves,"
the man says.
In what he
describes as the "oath of poison", he says there are two alternatives
open to the disloyal: "Either you poison yourselves or you take this (gun)
which shoots. There must always be a bullet reserved; one for you."
Boccassini
said the Santa's affiliation "is in their DNA and under their skin and
they can leave the 'Ndrangheta either by collaborating with the state or
through death".
The name
'Ndrangheta comes from the Greek for courage or loyalty. Its tight clan
structure has made it famously difficult to penetrate.
She referred
to a conversation wiretapped in July last year, where boss Michelangelo
Chindamo was heard saying that "the music may change but the rest
remains... we can never change".
He warned
mobsters with him that "having a mobile phone in your pocket... is like having
a policeman in your pocket," and cited anti-mafia magistrate Boccassini
and police wiretaps as exactly the sort of threat the clans faced.
Notebooks
were discovered during the police raid which detailed the rites, investigators
said.
Boccassini
said the proof gathered by the police was so solid that those arrested would be
dealt with under a fast-track trial procedure which would do away with
preliminary hearings.
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