FOGGIA – “The sea is ours!” a boss of these parts shouted to the men of the clan a few months ago, Pietro La Torre. And they are also the fire of these nights, nine bombs in nine days, nine roars that broke shop windows and made glass tremble, destroyed projects and frightened future. The point is that for some time now the earth, and the air, are no longer a thing only of the Foggia mafia, the fourth mafia, the one without a name but with exterminated strength and power, “the most urgent criminal emergency in the country. “defined it a few weeks ago, in front of the people of this land, the Minister of Justice, Marta Cartabia.
What is happening in Puglia, or rather, in the province of Foggia? It happens that the state has finally arrived for some time. Who arrested mafia members and supporters, municipal police stations (including that of Foggia) and companies. And now, in response, the mafia has declared war on him.
The numbers: in nine days, in this 2022, organized crime has placed nine different bombs between Foggia and the province. They destroyed shops and hairdressers, punished honest traders and settled internal accounts with the clear aim of sending messages. So that everyone understands that nothing has changed. That whoever commanded commands. “The mafia is trying to react to the blows that the State team has inflicted on the clans in recent months: to the successes of the judicial police, to those of the social anti-mafia which is now finally there”, the district anti-mafia prosecutor reasons, Roberto Rossi.
Fish Mafia in Foggia, Cafiero De Raho: “Reveals the weakness of the clans”. Rossi: “We will beat them”
Until a few years ago, statistics showed that 80 percent of local merchants and entrepreneurs paid for protection money. Today the numbers show that there are signs from which to start again: the reports of extortion, he documented Tano Grasso, in the last year they have increased by 11 per cent compared to a decrease in crime of 9. And if the numbers are not enough to explain, there are the words. The Foggia mafias knew no repentant. Why, as the deputy anti-mafia prosecutor explained Giuseppe Gatti who has lived under guard for a decade because the Foggia people wanted to kill him, stealing the words from a mafioso, “here the repentant does not go out because it is a whole family: a family means blood. And there is no more trust than blood”. Now, however, even the blood has begun to betray. Some repentant appeared. Republic was able to read the statements of one of them, Horace Coda, a man of the Raduano clan: “After the anti-racket was created – he said – no one ever touched these entrepreneurs because it was known that it was safe in prison. Because the traders were protected by the state”.
It was therefore necessary to hit the others immediately. Why they didn’t follow suit. “But it is time that we must react, and not leave us alone” shouts the mayor of San Severo, Francesco Miglio. Because if it is true that this clan reaction is a reaction to the state, now the state cannot stop. San Severo in recent days has woken up four times with the bombs that destroyed shutters and shop windows. But the heart of the city crumpled this summer: while all of Italy was on the road to celebrate Italy’s victory at the European football championship, the mafia was killing mario anastasio, prejudiced. Beside him was his grandson, Dodo, 6 years old. He took a bullet and, perhaps, he will never walk again. And since blood calls blood, Luigi Bonaventura died after Anastasio in the summer of San Severo: according to the investigators it was a response to the murder in July.
Two bombs in 3 minutes, the night of terror in San Severo: “These here are becoming the masters”
by Tatiana Bellizzi
“Don’t leave us alone”, Miglio repeats, next to those who say “enough” to the mafia. There are, however, also those who only say “enough”: in Foggia someone begins to turn up their noses for the commissariamento of the Municipality, in the administrations where they have recently voted, they begin to see friends of mafia members again. “This is the most delicate moment: we must not let our guard down”, explained, not surprisingly, the national anti-mafia prosecutor, Federico Cafiero de Raho, who will be in Foggia today alongside the Minister of the Interior, Luciana Lamorgese. They will ask people for courage, but there are those who ask them not to stop.
Yesterday the Attorney Rossi – who works alongside the head of the Foggia office, Ludovico Vaccaro – he wrote to the CSM asking for the seven magistrates and the missing staff. The anti-mafia – Libera, the associations of entrepreneurs, the schools – are making extraordinary efforts. But it is a fact that the regional president of Confindustria, Sergio Fontana, who spent so much on the anti-racket of this land, was subjected to intimidation a few weeks ago, and now the prosecutor is evaluating whether there is a thread with Foggia. “We are not giving up,” said Massimo, one of the merchants who saw the shutter and shop blown up. “But, please, don’t you either.”
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