Italy:The seemingly unstoppable Calabrian mafia is bringing murder and drug shipments far beyond Italy's shores, writes Paddy Agnew.
Police superintendent Salvatore Aversa was an investigator who tried to do his job correctly. So doing, he became a problem for the local mafia, the 'Ndrangheta, in Lamezia Terme, Calabria. On the evening of January 4th, 1992, he and his wife Lucia were gunned down and killed in central Via dei Campioni.
For the rest of Italy, this was just another killing in Calabria, the southernmost region of mainland Italy, best known for its poverty and its organised crime. Many Italians may not even have noticed the killing. Fewer will be aware of what happened next. Three days after the killing, Salvatore Aversa's coffin was burst open and his body burned. The 'Ndrangheta was sending out a savage message for anyone who was thinking of testifying about the Aversa killing.
Until this summer, many people outside Italy will have been unaware of the ruthless power and fierce savagery of the 'Ndrangheta. A criminal organisation which prides itself on keeping a low profile, it earned itself unwelcome international headlines last August when six Italians were shot dead in a Mafia-style execution outside a restaurant in the German town of Duisburg.
"We knew something was about to happen, we'd had indications but not where and when," said magistrate Vicenzo Macri of the Direzione Nazionale Antimafia, Italy's nationwide anti-mafia investigative unit.
"It came as a big surprise to us that it happened in Germany . . . Those killings come out of a feud that goes back to 1991 and arguments about the division of money earned from kidnapping," said Macri.
The Duisburg killings took a lot of people by surprise. How come Italians were killing one another in Germany? And why was one of the victims, German-born and -bred 18-year-old Tommaso Venturi, being "initiated" into the 'Ndrangheta? Venturi had the partially burnt picture of a saint in his trouser pockets - the burning of such a "santino" is a widely-used initiation ritual and investigators now believe that the late night restaurant meal in Da Bruno's had been a celebration not of Venturi's 18th birthday but rather of his "recruitment" into the ranks of the Vattari/Pelle 'Ndrangheta family.
"People think this is just a Calabrian problem. But if I were in a lot of different European countries, and Latin American ones too, I would be worried. The 'Ndrangheta is present in many countries," says Nicola Gratteri, a Reggio Calabria-based state investigator who says that his investigations are often hampered by a lack of co-operation (and different legislation) when they move outside of Italian confines.
Gratteri points out that the 'Ndrangheta is a powerful organisation, and one that generates a huge turnover from its criminal activities.
At any given moment, the 'Ndrangheta will have 3,000-5,000kg of cocaine out on the road, en route for delivery to Europe and North America.
All of this is controlled by perhaps 15-20 key "families" who, unlike their Sicilian counterparts, are nearly always blood relatives. 'Ndrangheta investigators claim that this is one of the organisation's greatest strengths because it discourages the "supergrass" phenomenon. If an 'Ndrangheta "soldier" turns state's witness, he will have to inform on his father or his father-in-law or his brother or indeed on all of them.
For this reason, fighting the 'Ndrangheta has proved much more difficult than combating Cosa Nostra in Sicily or the Camorra in Naples. Whereas both those organisations have suffered severe blows when senior godfathers such as mafioso Tommaso Buscetta turned state's witness, there have been very few 'Ndrangheta "pentiti" and none of them have been senior figures in the organisation.
For this reason, too, telephone surveillance is vital in the fight against the 'Ndrangheta. Yet, investigators point out that a Bill restricting phone taps, currently going through parliament, could endanger future investigations.
Today's 'Ndrangheta "operatives" like to lie low, says anti-mafia investigating magistrate Alberto Cisterna. They travel second class on the train, they live in modest housing and they do nothing to attract open warfare with the Italian state. Indeed only two magistrates have been killed by the 'Ndrangheta in the last 30 years, a period when Cosa Nostra has regularly killed magistrates, most notably in the summer of 1992 when, in separate attacks, it blew up both Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
Furthermore, says Cisterna, the 'Ndrangheta does not keep its money in Calabria. The organisation is busy investing in businesses and properties in many different places, such as Toronto, Bogotá, Montevideo, the Algarve, Marseilles and Rotterdam.
In many of these places, the 'Ndrangheta may permit a lavish lifestyle, but not back home in Calabria. Given the tangible poverty and the squalid ugliness of much of urban Calabria, wealth would simply be too obvious.
In a town like San Luca, in the Aspromonte hills, the home of the feud that erupted into the Duisburg killings, no one gets much upset about the fact that the metal dustbin in the main square is "pockmarked" with bullet holes. "Soldiers" have used it for target practise - that is normal. Someone driving around in a state-of-the-art Ferrari, however, would be noticed. That would not be normal.
As the Duisburg killings illustrate, too, one of the aspects of the 'Ndrangheta is that it reproduces itself and its modus operandi when living abroad. Hence 18-year-old Venturi was about to be affiliated into the ranks in Duisburg using an ancient rite of passage still used in Calabria.
The 'Ndrangheta story has a sadly familiar ring about it. Where the state goes missing, where there is a lack of infrastructure, where there is unemployment (10.6 per cent in the Mezzogiorno, the south, as opposed to 3.2 per cent in the north), organised crime thrives.
Not for nothing, about 17,000 young people have left Calabria in the last two years.
Does all of this mean that there is no hope for Calabria? Investigators and local officials do not see it that way. Gianni Speranza, mayor of Lamezia Terme, points to the experience of the Godino family in his town, a family who run a tyre sales business. They refused to pay protection money. In the end, the 'Ndrangheta burned down their business.
That was the bad news. Mayor Speranza points out, however, that the Godino family was up and running again almost immediately and that, over time, they not only received compensation for their destroyed premises and a new warehouse but also, much more importantly, new contracts from multinational tyre suppliers.
"This is just a small thing, but it's a sign of hope."
Hope, too, was represented by those young people who turned out for the funeral of Francesco Fortugno in Locri, Calabria in November two years ago. A local politician, doctor, husband and father of two, Fortugno had dared to fight against the 'Ndrangheta's stranglehold on the economy of his home town, Locri. For his pains, Fortugno was gunned down in broad daylight on a Sunday afternoon just minutes after he had voted in Italy's first-ever centre-left primary election. At his funeral, outraged young people turned out to file behind a banner that read: "And Now Kill Us All".
The anger of the young people that day was a noble thing. Mayor Speranza and investigators like Cisterna and Macri are right to point to that as a sign of hope. Yet, the 'Ndrangheta still represents a risk for Italian democracy. As one of the founders of the Italian state, Giuseppe Mazzini, once put it: "Italy's fate is the fate of the mezzogiorno (south)".