ROME LETTER: Two amateur football teams from Calabria in southern Italy observed a minute's silence prior to a keenly contested local derby recently. In itself, this is hardly news. The observation of a minute's silence in memory of the dead before football games is a recurrent custom in Italy.
The difference here was that the dead man in whose honour the minute's silence was observed by the Strongoli and Isola Capo Rizzuto teams was not a former team player but rather Carmine Arena, a Mafia godfather who had been "taken out" the previous evening in a bloody shoot-out.
The story sounds implausible but it is true. The very mark of respect and honour that in recent months has been afforded at football grounds all around Italy to the victims of the Beslan school massacre, to the two Italian hostages killed in Iraq this year, to the 18 soldiers killed at the Italian military base of Nasiriya, Iraq, last November and to many others was last Sunday offered up to the memory of a Mafia godfather.
Forty-five-year-old mafioso Carmine Arena, cousin of the president of the Isola Capo Rizzuto team, Pasquilino Arena, was a figure well known to local police authorities and to anti-Mafia investigators alike.
Nephew of 'ndrangheta (Mafia) boss Nicola Arena, currently in prison for Mafia-related offences, Carmine had himself got out of jail just four years ago after serving a six-year sentence for Mafia membership.
Two Saturdays ago, he pulled up in front of the family villa in Isola Capo Rizzuto in his bullet-proof Lancia Thema. As he waited for the automatic gate to open on to the driveway, he was shot down by three or four rival mafiosi who had been waiting for him.
His rivals were serious about their intentions, killing Arena with a bazooka, a rocket-propelled grenade combat weapon normally used against armoured cars, tanks and helicopters. For good measure, his killers then peppered the car with several rounds fired from Kalashnikovs and shotguns.
In a region currently beset with gangland warfare, the killing commanded little or no space in Sunday news bulletins. It was only when the minute's silence was observed at the following day's game that national media latched onto the story, commenting once more upon the "Far West" nature of life in parts of southern Italy.
The match had been handled by an 18-year-old referee, Paolo Zimmaro, who claimed later he had been misled, adding that he was unaware of the killing of Arena the previous evening and saying: "We were lined up on the centre circle, when one of the directors from the Isola team shouted across at me, asking me if we could observe a minute's silence in memory of one of their lads who had died."
Whether or not the young referee was genuinely unaware of the gravity of his action or had in fact been intimidated into calling the minute's silence is, in the end, of only relative importance. Crotone public prosecutor Franco Tricoli probably spoke for many of his colleagues in the magistrature and the police force when saying on Monday: "From the legal viewpoint, no crime was committed, but from the moral viewpoint? . . . It takes more than policemen and soldiers to beat the 'ndrangheta; it also requires the participation and the strength of civil society, things that in this case went absolutely missing."
Men like Mr Tricoli, of course, are fighting an uphill battle. Today's Mafia is not and never has been some form of folkloric Robin Hood outfit. Today's Mafia is a deadly serious socio-economic phenomenon with an estimated turnover of €100 billion or 9.5 per cent of Italian GDP.
There are four different Mafia organisations in modern Italy - Cosa Nostra in Sicily, the 'ndrangheta in Calabria, the Camorra in Naples and the Sacro Corona Unità in Puglia. Between them they command up to 40,000 foot soldiers, men responsible for 666 killings in 1999-2003, according to Rapporto Italia 2004 from figures provided by the independent research body EURISPES.
A recent survey by the Fondazione BNC and research institute CENSIS estimates the Mafia costs southern Italy €7.5 billion per annum by way of damage done to economic development.
Not surprisingly, racketeering, corruption, market control and, ultimately, killings tend to discourage investment and thus cripple growth.
The Rapporto Italia 2004 highlights this concern, commenting: "What has become a growing and ever more worrying matter of concern is the attitude of business entrepreneurs who, right from the moment they apply for a public works contract, see the payment of a bribe to organised crime as a simply unavoidable cost to be written into the company's balance sheet. "
Those worries have hardly been lessened by the football fans' minute of silence.