Anti-mafia police arrested Antonio Iovine, one of the most powerful leaders of the Camorra organised crime group, as he was trying to leap from a balcony to get away, Italian officials said.
Mr Iovine, believed to be the boss of the murderous Casalesi clan, was found hiding in a wall cavity in a small villa in Casal di Principe – the gang’s home town in a farming area north of Naples, a police spokesman told AFP. The 46-year-old had been on Italy’s most wanted list for years.
“Today is a great day for the fight against the mafia,” Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said after the arrest.
Mr Iovine tried to escape by jumping from a balcony after being found but was captured before he managed to get away, the spokesman said.
An unshaven Iovine was later seen smiling as he was escorted by officers out of Naples police station. “I’m delighted. It’s a big success. A big blow” for the Camorra, Naples police chief Santi Giuffre said. “We’ve been preparing this for a while,” he added. Mr Iovine was sentenced to life in prison in absentia earlier this year along with 15 other Camorra bosses, one of whom is still on the run. They were found guilty on multiple counts including murder and extortion. The trial – along with the seizure of assets worth hundreds of millions of euros – is believed to have reduced the power of the once-mighty Casalesi clan described in the popular recent film and book “Gomorrah”. The film won the Grand Prix at the Cannes film festival in 2008. “Iovine is a businessman boss capable of handling hundreds of millions of euros,” said Roberto Saviano, a journalist and the author of “Gomorrah”, who has been forced to live in hiding since his book was published in 2006. “I hope that now there will be a 360-degree sweep… We have to attack the heart of the criminal economy in Lombardy,” a wealthy region of northern Italy, Mr Saviano was quoted by Ansa news agency as saying.
In February 2008, Vincenzo Licciardi, 42, head of the so-called Secondigliano Alliance, was also caught in a house in the village of Licola, on the coast north of Naples, after a long police investigation involving cutting-edge technology.
Factbox on Camorra
What is it?
The Camorra is a mafia-like criminal organisation, or secret society, originating in the region of Campania and its capital Naples in Italy. It finances itself through drug trafficking/distribution, cigarette smuggling, people smuggling, kidnapping, blackmail, bribery, prostitution, toxic waste disposal, construction, counterfeiting, loan sharking, money laundering, illegal gambling, robbery, arms smuggling, extortion, protection, political corruption, and racketeering and its activities have led to high levels of murder in the areas in which it operates.
Its origins
The origins of the Camorra are not entirely clear. It may date back to the 16th century as a direct descendant of a Spanish secret society, the Garduna, founded in 1417. Officials of the Spanish Kingdom of Naples may have introduced the organisation to the area, or it may have grown gradually out of small criminal gangs operating among the poor in Neapolitan society near the end of the 18th century.
The first official use of the word dates from 1735, when a royal decree authorised the establishment of eight gaming-houses in Naples. The word is almost certainly a blend of capo (boss) and a Neapolitan street game, the morra. (In this game, two persons wave their hands simultaneously, while a crowd of surrounding gamblers guess, in chorus, at the total number of fingers exposed by the principal players). This activity was prohibited by the local government and some people started making the players pay for being “protected” against the passing police.
Camorristi in Naples, 1906
The Camorra first emerged during the chaotic power vacuum in the years between 1799–1815, when a Neapolitan Republic was proclaimed on the wave of the French Revolution and the restoration of Bourbon dynasty. The first official mention of the Camorra as an organisation dates from 1820, when police records detail a disciplinary meeting of the Camorra. That year a first written statute was also discovered, indicating a stable organisational structure in the underworld.
The evolution into more organised formations indicated a qualitative change: the Camorra and camorristi were no longer local gangs living off theft and extortion; they now had a fixed structure and some kind of hierarchy.
Another qualitative leap was the agreement of the liberal opposition and the Camorra following the defeat in the 1848 revolution. The liberals realised that they needed popular support to overthrow the king. They turned to the Camorra and paid them, the camorristi being the leaders of the city’s poor. The Camorra effectively had developed into power brokers in a few decades.
One of the Camorra’s strategies to gain social prestige is political patronage. The family clans became the preferred interlocutors of local politicians and public officials because of their grip on the community. In turn the family bosses used their political sway to assist and protect their clients against the local authorities. Through a mixture of brute force, political status, and social leadership, the Camorra family clans imposed themselves as middlemen between the local community and bureaucrats and politicians at the national level. They granted privileges and protection and intervened in favour of their clients in return for their silence and connivance against local authorities and the police. With their political connections, the heads of the major Neapolitan families became power brokers in local and national political contexts, providing Neapolitan politicians with broad electoral support and in return receiving benefits for their constituency.
Garbage crisis
Since the mid-1990s, the Camorra has taken over the handling of garbage disposal in the region of Campania, with disastrous results for the environment and the health of the general population. Heavy metals, industrial waste, chemicals and household garbage are frequently mixed together, dumped near roads and burnt to avoid detection, leading to severe soil and air pollution.
With the assistance of private businessmen known as “stakeholders”, the numerous Camorra clans are able to gain massive profits from under-the-table contracts with local, legitimate businesses. These “stakeholders” are able to offer companies highly lucrative deals to remove their waste at a significantly lower price. With little to no overhead, Camorra clans and their associates see very high profit margins.
Efforts to fight the clan
The Camorra has proven to be an extremely difficult organisation to fight within Italy. At the first mass trial against the Camorra in 1911-12, Captain Carlo Fabroni of the Carabinieri gave testimony on how complicated it was to successfully prosecute the Camorra: “The Camorrist has no political ideals. He exploits the elections and the elected for gain. The leaders distribute bands throughout the town, and they have recourse to violence to obtain the vote of the electors for the candidates whom they have determined to support. Those who refuse to vote as instructed are beaten, slashed with knives, or kidnapped. All this is done with assurance of impunity, as the Camorrists will have the protection of successful politicians, who realise that they cannot be chosen to office without paying toll to the Camorra.”