Naples court sentences mafia bosses to life

A MARATHON trial spanning nearly a decade - during which five innocent people involved in the case were murdered - has meted out 16 life sentences in a massive blow to one of Italy's most powerful criminal clans.

But yesterday anti-mafia campaigner and author Roberto Saviano warned that while the investigation, known as Spartacus, represented a significant victory for the Italian state, it must not lower its guard before the next chapter, exploring the Camorra clan's links with politics and the law, is played out.

It is important that attention remains on the Casalesi and what their criminal power has managed to realise throughout all these years

 

"It is important that attention remains on the Casalesi and what their criminal power has managed to realise throughout all these years," he said. "It is imperative that we continue to monitor the other arms of the Spartacus trial - the ones that relate to the white-collar criminals, to their connivance with politics and with the law."

Saviano, who has lived under police guard since his book on the Neapolitan Camorra, Gomorra, was published two years ago, attended court in an act of defiance on Thursday.

The murderous Casalesi clan, named after the town of Casal di Principe on the outskirts of Naples, is estimated to have amassed a 30 billion euro ($A50 billion) network of illegal businesses and has been called the successor to the Corleone family, which ruled Sicily in the 1980s.

The clan is believed to have carried out hundreds of murders over the past three decades.

Its head, Francesco Schiavone, nicknamed Sandokan after the hit 1970s TV series starring Indian actor Kabir Bedi, will spend the rest of his life in prison, while two of his lovers - both American women (and former NATO officials) - will also see the inside of cells.

In all, 36 members of the criminal syndicate have been jailed and 16 received life sentences.

Spartacus was a five-year investigation by the Anti-Mafia Procura of Naples. More than 1300 people were investigated, 508 witnesses gave evidence and 626 were interviewed. The trial delved into a criminal network that had infiltrated every aspect of the Italian economy. About 20 mafia turncoats gave evidence.

Five people, including a court interpreter, were murdered by the Camorra clan during the trial and appeal. Another judge and three journalists braved death threats through the hearings.

The presiding judge, Raffaello Magi, said the Casalesi clan exploited and extorted from every business and economic opportunity available to it, from waste disposal to construction, to creating a monopoly in the cement market for their own building businesses to the distribution of materials. If a building business wanted to set up, it would have to pay for the privilege, buy material from the clan and keep paying for protection.

The judge said the clan rorted and controlled elections and kept businesses under its thumb for decades.

It is even believed to have won the right to build part of the new autostrada to Rome and parts of the prison at Santa Capua Vetere, where its bosses will spend the rest of their days.

One key player, Francesco Bidognetti or "Cicciott'e Mezzanotte" (Fatty Midnight) - was the boss of the waste-disposal arm of the clan. Two other bosses, Michele Zagaria and Antonio Iovine, also received life sentences but are yet to be found.

In 1996, when 450 million lire was confiscated from the Casalesi, the clan was supposed to have been crushed. Another 515 million lire was seized the next year. But the Casalesi continued to prosper, and became so bold that some of its members held meetings in the local police station at San Cipriano d'Aversa.

Saviano wrote in La Repubblica on Wednesday, however, that the sentences will finally bring the clan to its knees: men who never believed they would end their lives behind bars will never leave their cells again.

For decades, the Casalesi created terror in Naples and, wrote Saviano, left a trail of death: "People forgotten, ignored, often not even cited or mentioned."

The "names of the dead in this war" included a policeman killed at 20 because he had participated in the arrest of one of Sandokan's men, a man murdered simply because he was the brother of one of the trial judges, another killed because he was an environmental campaigner against the clan's toxic waste dumping, and a priest, Don Peppino Diana, for daring to publish an anti-mafia ode.

The clan kept killing right up to the last few weeks before final sentencing, gunning down Michele Orsi, a businessman who worked in the waste business with the Casalesi, on June 2. Two days before, shots were fired at a 25-year-old woman whose aunt had turned state witness.

"We hope that this trial will not be simply a dream we wake from but a concrete opportunity for the best to emerge from this land which can no longer stand the rottenness that governs it," wrote Saviano.

"Like the answer, in Isaiah chapter 21, verses 11 and 12 ... the night is coming to an end but the dawn has yet to break."