For Nicola Gratteri, the lead prosecutor in Italy’s largest anti-mafia trial in more than 30 years, the fight against the mob has always been a personal issue.
“I have known the mafia since I was a child because I was hitchhiking to school and I often saw dead bodies on the road,” he told reporters ahead of the opening yesterday of the landmark “maxi-trial.”
“I thought: ‘When I grow up, I want to do something so that this won’t happen again,’” he said.
Photo: Reuters
More than 350 alleged members and associates of the feared ’Ndrangheta crime syndicate are going on trial in Calabria, the heart of the organized crime group, accused of everything from murder to drug trafficking, money laundering and mafia association.
A call center in the town of Lamezia Terme was specially converted to host the proceedings, which Gratteri expects to last one year, but which many believe will stretch on for far longer.
The prosecutor grew up in Calabria, from where the ’Ndrangheta has extended its reach across all parts of the world, surpassing Sicily’s Cosa Nostra as Italy’s most fearsome crime syndicate.
“I know the ’Ndrangheta well from inside, because when I was a child I was at school with the children of mafia bosses,” Gratteri said.
“The kids I played with then became mobsters and then became drug traffickers. So, that’s why I’m familiar with the criminal philosophy, the way of thinking of the ’Ndrangheta members, and this helps in my work,” he added.
Gratteri said he felt “very confident” that his case would stand up in court, in what promises to be a long and complicated trial, with more than 900 witnesses just for the prosecution.
It focuses on the Mancuso, a clan based in the Vibo Valentia province, as well as on the politicians, lawyers, businesspeople and others accused of enabling them.
Gratteri, 62, has spent three decades under close police protection and is one of Italy’s most high-profile anti-mafia figures.
He is often compared with Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, star prosecutors who worked on Italy’s first mass trial against the mafia in the 1980s.
That trial, leading to hundreds of convictions, dealt a major blow to Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, but cost Falcone and Borsellino their lives as mobsters killed them both in retribution.
Gratteri said his anti-mafia efforts were being supported by the gradual breakdown of omerta, the mafia code of silence, among ordinary Calabrians.
“Over the last years we have gained a lot of credibility, a lot of trust. People have started to cooperate, the people are standing by us, are starting to believe in us,” he said.
On the Chinese microblogging platform Sina Weibo, enthusiastic slackers share their tips: Fill up a thermos with whiskey, do planks or stretches in the work pantry at regular intervals, drink liters of water to prompt lots of trips to the toilet on work time, and, once there, spend time on social media or playing games on your phone. “Not working hard is everyone’s basic right,” one commenter wrote. “With or without legal protection, everyone has the right to not work hard.” Young Chinese people are pushing back against an engrained culture of overwork, and embracing a philosophy of laziness known as “touching
‘STUNNED’: With help from an official at the US Department of Justice, Donald Trump reportedly planned to oust the acting attorney general in a bid to overturn the election Former US president Donald Trump was at his Florida resort on Saturday, beginning post-presidency life while US President Joe Biden settled into the White House, but in Washington and beyond, the chaos of the 45th president’s final days in office continued to throw out damaging aftershocks. In yet another earth-shaking report, the New York Times said that Trump plotted with an official at the US Department of Justice to fire the acting attorney general, then force Georgia Republicans to overturn his defeat in that state. Meanwhile, former acting US secretary of defense Christopher Miller made an extraordinary admission, telling Vanity Fair that
Boeing set a target of designing and certifying its jetliners to fly on 100 percent sustainable fuels by 2030, amid rising pressure on planemakers to take climate change seriously. Regulators allow a 50-50 blend of sustainable and conventional fuels, and Boeing on Friday said it would work with authorities to raise the limit. Rival Airbus is considering another tack: a futuristic lineup of hydrogen-powered aircraft that would reach the skies by 2035. The aircraft manufacturers face growing public clamor to cut emissions in the aviation industry, which added more than 1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in 2019, according to
Mongolian Prime Minister Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh on Thursday resigned following a protest over a hospital’s treatment of a new mother who tested positive for COVID-19. Khurelsukh, whose Mongolian People’s Party holds a strong majority in the parliament known as the State Great Khural, stepped down after accusing Mongolian President Khaltmaagiin Battulga of the Democratic Party of orchestrating a political crisis. A small protest broke out in the capital, Ulan Bator, on Wednesday after TV footage appeared of a woman who had just given birth being escorted in slippers and a thin robe from the maternity ward to a special wing for COVID-19 patients
RSS