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Italian Police Break Up Major Mob Clan, Arrest Dozens

Francesco — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:03:32 +0000

Italian police have broken up a major mafia clan, arresting 74 people and seizing businesses, land, race horses and a London-based online betting company, officials said Tuesday.

Local politicians and businessmen in the southern Italian city of Bari were among those implicated as part of a three-year operation, called “Domino,” for collaborating with the Parisi clan, police said.

Lt. Col. Salvatore Russo, the police official in charge of the operation, said 74 people were arrested, while an additional nine warrants were issued for suspects already jailed on separate charges.

The 48-year-old head of the clan, Savino Parisi, was arrested overnight along with his closest associates. They are accused of attempted murder, drug trafficking, loan-sharking, interfering with the bidding process for public contracts and money laundering.

Italian MPs to be offered drugs tests to prove scandal hit Parliament is not an opium smoking den

Francesco — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:50:56 +0000

Drugs tests are to be offered to all Italian MPs and senators from tomorrow in a bid to prove their parliament is not an ‘opium smoking den’.

The testing of Italy’s serving politicians is not obligatory and has been promoted by Carlo Giovanardi, a senator with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom Party.

The initiative comes just two weeks after the regional governor of Lazio, married father-of-three Piero Marrazzo, was forced to stand down after being caught up in a scandal involving transsexual prostitutes.

Senator Giovanardi has insisted that the test is voluntary but said he had had dozens of requests from parliamentary colleagues to take part, adding: ‘I will not name names, it is up to them to say who they are.’

Tests will be carried out on urine, which can reveal if drugs have been taken in the previous 72 hours, and hair follicles, which can detect abuse from six months ago.

Do hell with Immunity, Berlusconi's adamant to show ‘the stuff he’s made of’

Francesco — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:53:51 +0000

Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Thursday he will go on TV and appear in courtrooms to prove that corruption and tax fraud charges in two trials against him are false.

The proceedings in Milan are to resume after a top Italian court overturned a law granting Berlusconi immunity from prosecution while in office. However, the main trial will have to start anew, lawyers said, making it unlikely that a verdict might be reached before the statute of limitations kicks in.

Thousands in Italy rally against the mafia

Francesco — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 06:44:33 +0000

housands of Italians marched on Saturday in an anti-mafia protest and called on all citizens to take a public stand against Italy’s powerful crime syndicates.Crying openly and shouting “Basta!” (Enough!), politicians and anti-mafia leaders made emotional appeals against keeping silent and read out the names of people assassinated by the mafia.Many at the rally in the southern city of Bari held up pictures of relatives gunned down by members of organized crime.”The mafia has not been defeated and above all the incurable ill of turning a blind eye needs to be defeated,” said Enzo Longo, the mayor of the Sicilian town of Capaci best known for the 1992 killing of a judge and his entourage by the mafia.The founder of anti-mafia group Libera, Don Luigi Ciotti, led the march holding a small piano flute that belonged to an 11-year-old boy strangled 15 years ago by the mafia, who then left his body to dissolve in a tub of acid

US in New Push to Bolster Afghan Police

Francesco — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 05:18:23 +0000

The United States gave Afghan police 70,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 51,000 pistols and 3,500 vehicles last year, part of $2.5 billion in spending to upgrade the force.

Despite that influx of firepower, Taliban militants targeted police in dozens of attacks, killing at least 925 in 2007. Afghan police often work in small groups in remote and dangerous territory, where they are outnumbered, outgunned and overwhelmed by insurgents.

The lack of an effective training program for the police a role first held by Germany is often cited as one of the West’s biggest failings since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that ousted the Taliban regime for harboring Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida bases.

Now the U.S. is rolling out a new training program that will see small teams of American soldiers mentor and train police officers over the course of several months.