On Tuesday in Palermo a maxi-operation coordinated by the Anti-Mafia District Directorate, put 181 people who operated for Cosa Nostra, in handcuffs. Those arrested were top and middle-level bosses, so-called “men of honor”, and extortionists from the Sicilian capital and province.
It took 1,200 carabinieri from provincial commands across Sicily to carry out the operation. The raid hit the mafia that has an iron grip on the city through an efficient organization that makes use of technology. In fact, the jailed and still free Mafia leaders used the latest generation of smartphones by installing encrypted software in them to participate in summits on the basis of which they organized the “mandamenti,” which in the organization’s jargon indicates the area of influence of three or more families affiliated with the Mafia. As Palermo prosecutor Maurizio De Lucia points out, “the presence of phones circulating freely inside prisons is nothing new, unfortunately it is a recurring fact reported by other colleagues throughout Italy.”
De Lucia also stressed during his interview with the Italian media that “cosa nostra continues to exert its appeal in certain environments such as the suburbs where young people have limited life alternatives and identify with representations of power that the Mafia still enjoys. A great many young people are involved in today’s investigation, and we need to be especially careful about these. Just as we are careful about the old bosses returning, we must be careful about those being recruited today, that is, the future of the Mafia.”
And the old dream remains alive, adds De Lucia: “Cosa Nostra would like to return to the provincial commission, but it cannot reconstitute it. The Palermo bosses have not shelved the old dream, he says, adding a reflection on what it means to enter the mafia circuit: “subjects who have been in prison, once they get out they return to ‘mafia,’ based on the elements we have acquired. There are two ways to get out of Cosa Nostra, explains the prosecutor: either by cooperating with justice or by ending one’s life. Otherwise one remains in Cosa Nostra. The events that are represented in these investigations also demonstrate this.”
