Italy: Drugs and brutality reign in the immediate vicinity of holiday hotspots
Created: 07/28/2022, 14:14
By: Christina Denk
In the forests around the holiday region on Lake Maggiore, the police are chasing drug gangs.
There have already been 24 arrests in four months in 2022.
Now the carabinieri are also asking tourists for help.
Luino - Lake Maggiore is a holiday paradise and also popular with Germans.
But in the immediate vicinity, the reality is different.
The Swiss daily newspaper
Blick
accompanied Italian officials to the woods around Luino.
Instead of vacation and relaxation, weapons, drugs and violence are on the agenda there.
The area is popular with hikers.
Italy: Drug dealing and violence in the forests around Lake Maggiore
In the forests of Valcuvia and Valganna, dealers sell cocaine, heroin and hashish by the kilo.
"From here, the dealers climb up to their hiding places and bring the stuff to the customers," Alessandro Volpini, head of the Luino Carabinieri, told the Schweizer Zeitung.
Drug deals and acts of violence take place in the woods.
Some members are tortured to obey their bosses, the policeman said.
The violence seems to have escalated since it began about five years ago.
“In the first Maghreb operation, we arrested around 20 people and seized seven kilos of drugs.
In 2019-2020 we also found dozens of weapons in the woods.
Rifles, pistols, machetes.
The gangs started to defend their territory,” according to the police from Italy.
After a lull in the lockdown, violence rose significantly in 2022.
There was an exchange of fire in February.
In four months there were 24 arrests — 23 Moroccans and one Italian.
According to the Carabinieri, the forests are firmly in Moroccan hands.
The weekly market in Luino is popular with tourists.
But in the woods around the village, violence is increasing.
(Archive image) © Joachim Hahne/Imago
Italy: Violence escalates — Carabinieri asks tourists for help after gunfire
In order to get the problem under control in the holiday region, the police are present in the forests.
The ground is searched for weapons with metal detectors.
But tourists can also help.
Local and tourist hikers should keep their eyes peeled, report camps and photograph suspicious vehicles, Volpini told the newspaper.
Overall, there was a decrease in criminal offenses in Europe during the corona pandemic.
Eurostat recorded a 5% decline in 2020 after many years of rising trends.
In Germany, the slight downward trend continued in 2021.
It remains to be seen whether this will change after most of the Corona measures have been lifted in Germany and across Europe in 2022, such as on Lake Maggiore.
The region around Lake Maggiore, like many other southern European areas, is currently struggling with forest fires — an overview of the situation in the south.
(chd)
