The leader of a group of hardcore fans of Inter Milan soccer club on Wednesday stabbed to death a member of an Italian crime gang in what he claimed was self-defense.
Andrea Beretta, 49, head of the “curva nord” (north end in Italian) ultras soccer supporters said he stabbed fellow Inter fan Antonio Bellocco, 36, after he had shot him in the leg with a firearm, his lawyer and Italian media reports said. Beretta would be questioned in his hospital bed on Wednesday evening by a prosecutor, his lawyer Mirko Perlino said.
The two men had an altercation in a car on Wednesday morning outside a sports center in the Milan suburb of Cernusco sul Naviglio. Perlino said that his client, acting in self-defense, stabbed the victim in the throat.
Photo: Reuters
Beretta, who has been convicted several times for violence and drug dealing, became head of the Inter ultras after their historic leader, Vittorio Boiocchi, was assassinated in October 2022.
Italian media reports said that Bellocco is the heir of a powerful ‘Ndrangheta crime family from Calabria, and has been condemned in the past for organized crime activities.
The prosecutor assigned to the case is Paolo Storari, who specializes in organized crime and who has led investigations into Boiocchi’s assassination and into the mafia’s infiltration of hardcore Italian soccer supporter groups.
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