Italy launches largest mafia trial in decades

Italy puts the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta on the bench, currently the most widespread, powerful and dangerous mafia in the country.

It is the first time that this organization, considered the multinational crime company, based in southern Calabria, but with tentacles in half the world, faces a macroprocess of this magnitude.

There are 355 defendants on charges ranging from homicide and drug trafficking to extortion, kidnapping or money laundering, through illegal possession of weapons and explosives or influence peddling.

It had been three decades since the transalpine country launched a judicial operation of this magnitude against the mafia, since the historic process against the Sicilian Cosa Nostra between 1986 and 1987, in which its criminal structure was revealed and more than three were sentenced. hundreds of accused.

That trial that was held in a Palermo bunker designed

next to the jail it marked a turning point in the fight against the mafia.

In this time, the 'Ndrangheta, built around family ties and rooted in remote Calabria, one of the poorest areas of Italy and the continent, has learned to operate and exercise its power and oppression in the territory in silence, without great blood crimes.

Underrated for decades, it has become the leading importer and distributor of cocaine in Europe.

The trial, which began this Wednesday, is also being held in a bunker, built against the clock in an industrial estate in the Calabrian town of Lamezia Terme, in the heart of the organization, for security reasons and also to be able to accommodate all the accused , to their respective defenses and to the more than 900 witnesses who will participate in the process.

The alleged bosses of the criminal clans, the foot soldiers of the 'Ndrangheta, and also national and local politicians, businessmen, officials and agents of the forces of order, among others, will be tried, accused of collaborating with this hermetic organization mafiosa.

"It is important that the process be held in Calabria, where the crimes have been committed, and it is also a sign because people must understand, without excuses for anyone, that they can trust us, that we can give them answers," he said before beginning the hearing Nicola Gratteri, the Catanzaro prosecutor who has guided the investigations.

“This is a cornerstone of the wall that we are building to counter the 'Ndrangheta.

And to make a region that has been martyred for more than a century more habitable, "he added.

Gratteri, a historic opponent of the Calabrian mafia who lives under permanent escort, arrested more than 400 people in Italy, Germany, Bulgaria and Switzerland in 2019, in the framework of the

operation

, named after the disappeared Sieben William Scott, a special agent with the US anti-drug unit, the DEA, in Europe.

The trial focuses in a particular way on the Mancuso clan, one of the most revered 'Ndrangheta families –'ndrinas, according to the organization's terminology– and who for decades has been the owner and wife of the Vibo Valentia province.

Also in his alleged collaborators of public institutions and private companies and in other 12 clans considered "satellites" of the Mancuso.

Gratteri began to pull the thread of the file of the patriarch, considered the highest authority in the province, Luigi Mancuso, when he was released in 2012, after spending 19 years in prison for drug trafficking and mafia association.

The

, a descendant of a criminal dynasty that dates back to the beginning of the 20th century, will have to respond to Justice again, along with his acolytes.

This mafia organization, one of the most powerful on the planet and that was born with the theft of cattle, extortion and kidnappings, has built an empire of drugs, gambling and corruption in public tenders that, according to the Italian authorities, yields a profit of around 50,000 million euros each year.