Feb 08 2008
Arrests Thwart Return of Mafia Clan
ROME — In the Mafia’s slang they are scorned as the “scappati” — the “runaways” — a crime clan that sought refuge in the United States more than 20 years ago after being nearly wiped out in one of Sicily’s bloodiest mob wars.
Italian authorities say the biggest trans-Atlantic crackdown since the “Pizza Connection” case of the 1980s has now ruined the Inzerillo family’s plans to return to Sicily, possibly averting a new wave of vendettas on the Mediterranean island.
Police in New York and Palermo on Thursday arrested dozens of suspected mobsters, all alleged members of clans linked to Salvatore Lo Piccolo, the Sicilian Mafia boss arrested in November, and New York-based crime families like the Gambinos and the Inzerillos.
Authorities said the investigations in New York and Palermo, which have put behind bars more than 90 suspects, were an international attempt to disrupt Gambino ties to Sicilian counterparts and the return of their protegees, the Inzerillos, to the Italian island.
In New York, federal and state prosecutors indicted what was said to be almost the entire remaining hierarchy of the Gambino family, the once-powerful regime that has been limping from crisis to crisis since the death of notorious boss John Gotti.
Italian prosecutors said the arrests put an end to contacts between the two sides of the Atlantic that aimed to revive the Mafia’s control on international drug trafficking, which declined since the “Pizza Connection” probe broke a $1.6 billion heroin and cocaine smuggling operation that used pizzerias as fronts from 1975-1984.
Prosecutors say the wiretaps and Mafia turncoats that led to the raids, code-named operation “Old Bridge,” also helped solve the 25-year-old murders of two Inzerillo bosses killed by their own clan members who, in exchange, were allowed to live on in exile in the United States.
“This story goes back to the Mafia war of the 1980s and has all the elements of a crime novel: murder, betrayal and exile,” Palermo prosecutor Francesco Messineo told reporters in Rome.
In the early ’80s, the powerful Inzerillos were crushed in the violent rise of the Corleonesi family. Hundreds of mobsters from both sides along with innocent bystanders were gunned down in the power struggle, and the survivors of the defeated family were protected by the Gambinos in the United States.
The charges brought by Italian and U.S. authorities against some of those arrested Thursday include the murders of bosses Antonino and Pietro Inzerillo, Messineo said.
Some of the runaways won respite from the Corleonesi by killing Antonino, who disappeared in 1981, and Pietro, whose body was found in 1982 stuffed in the trunk of a car in New Jersey with a five-dollar bill in his mouth, prosecutors said.
The Corleonesi went on to dominate Cosa Nostra until the arrests of boss Salvatore “Toto” Riina in 1993 and of his successor, Bernardo Provenzano, in 2006.
With the Mafia weakened by these arrests and losing ground in the drug trade to other crime syndicates, like the Calabria-based ‘ndrangheta, Lo Piccolo made his bid to become the first “boss of bosses” in years who was not a Corleonesi man.
As part of his strategy, Lo Piccolo allowed some of the Inzerillos to return and sent emissaries to New York, where police shadowed them with surveillance photos and wiretaps.
“The Inzerillos still had the dream of returning to Sicily,” Messineo said. “Lo Piccolo’s goal was to mend relations with the Mafia in the United States and create commercial ties.”
Palermo police chief Giuseppe Caruso said that when Lo Piccolo was arrested last year investigators realized they would have to quickly move against the runaways and their allies. Otherwise, he said, Sicily could have faced a new Mafia war between those favoring the return of the Inzerillos and other clans still hungry for their blood.
Arrests Thwart Return of Mafia Clan - By ARIEL DAVID – AP - Feb 8, 2008 - http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iqb6lV3pjv9SrVJm4eOC4VYn2qKQD8UM2EIO0
