When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

TOPIC: mafia

Dottoré!

If We Were All Conscientious Objectors

Our Naples-based psychiatrist imagines a world where all professionals could deny care on the basis of religious objection.

In Italy, sacred Catholic values are untouchable.

In fact, they are so untouchable that abortion clinics are falling like flies, forced to close because more and more gynecologists are so-called "conscientious objectors" — allowed to refuse to terminate pregnancies based on religious conviction.

Watch VideoShow less

The Last Boss: Messina Denaro's Death Marks The End Of An Era For The Sicilian Mafia

Eight months after being arrested, following 30 years on the run, Matteo Messina Denaro died Monday. The son of a mobster and successor of Sicily's notorious boss of bosses, he had tried to transform Cosa Nostra into a modern criminal enterprise — with only partial success.

This article was updated Sep. 25, 2023 at 4:45 p.m.

-Analysis-

PALERMO — Matteo Messina Denaro, who for more than a decade was the Sicilian Mafia's "boss of bosses," died on Monday in an Italian hospital prison ward. His death came eight months after being captured following decades on the run as a fugitive from justice. His arrest in January 15, 1993, came almost 30 years to the day after Totò Riina, then the undisputed head of the Corleone clan, was captured in Palermo.

Tracing back in time, Messina Denaro began his criminal ascent in 1989, around the first time on record that he was reported for mob association for his participation in the feud between the Accardo and Ingoglia clans.

At the time, Messina Denaro's father, 'don Ciccio', was the Mafia boss in the western Sicilian city of Trapani — and at only 20 years of age, the ambitious young criminal became Totò Riina's protégé. He would go on to help transform Cosa Nostra, tearing it away from the feudal tradition and catapulting it into the world of would-be legitimate business affairs.

For 30 years he managed to evade capture. He had chosen the path of ‘essential communication’: a few short pizzini - small slips of paper used by the Sicilian Mafia for high-level communications - without compromising information by telephone or digital means.

“Never write the name of the person you are addressing," Messina Denaro told his underlings. "Don’t talk in cars because there could be bugs, always discuss in the open and away from telephones. Also, take off your watches.”

Keep reading...Show less

Can The Sicilian Mafia Keep Up With Cocaine Warlords Of Neighboring Calabria?

After the fall of the Sicilian Mafia boss of bosses Matteo Messina Denaro, it's time for Cosa Nostra to rebuild, and they'll be taking inspiration from their own past, but also must face the rising power of the 'ndrangheta in the neighboring region of Calabria

PALERMO — How is Cosa Nostra doing without its king?

Palermo prosecutor Maurizio Delucia takes a moment before offering his view on where the Sicilian Mafia may be heading. It's been a complicated period since even before — and especially after — the January arrest of the last top boss Matteo Messina Denaro, as the legendary Cosa Nostra clan has fallen behind the neighboring 'ndrangheta from the region of Calabria, in both wealth and power.

Keep reading...Show less

Death Trap At Sea — An Exclusive Investigation Of The Migrant Tragedy In Greek Waters

Hundreds of people died when a boat carrying migrants capsized on its way to Europe. Eyewitnesses raise serious accusations: were Greek officials to blame for the disaster? And what role does the "smuggling mafia" play? Die Welt reconstructs the events of the tragedy.

PYLOS — The drama began on the morning of Friday, June 9, 2023. From the Libyan port of Tobruk, Muhammad Nadeem called his nephew, Zohaib Shamraiz, who answered the phone from Barcelona. Shamraiz, 21, has been living there since he left his homeland of Pakistan six years ago.

The uncle wanted to go to Europe, too. But now, about to board a blue-hulled fishing boat that should take him to Italy in the next few hours, he has doubts. Muhammad Nadeem tells his nephew that far too many people wanted to get on the boat. He also tells him about a mafia that will probably force him to board anyway. These men had knives and guns, they threatened him.

Keep reading...Show less
Society
Giuseppe Legato

How The Calabrian Mob Is Infiltrating Religious Traditions Across Italy

From ancient processions to family funerals, the powerful Calabrian organized crime syndicate 'Ndrangheta is infiltrating into religious rites is present across the country.

TURIN — On Easter Sunday, three statues each held in the air by six bearers meet in the streets, surrounded by a crowd of people in celebration: they are the statues of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, and St. John the Apostle, who visits Mary to tell her about the Resurrection of her son.

The statue of St. John shuttles between Christ and Mary. Once, twice, and three times to communicate that the Lord has indeed overcome death. Then they bow. The Mother’s black veil is torn, the mourning has ended, and the miracle is served.

Watch VideoShow less
This Happened

This Happened — May 23: A Modern Mafia Assassination

Giovanni Falcone was assassinated on this day in 1992 by the Sicilian Mafia. Falcone, his wife, and three police officers were killed in a bomb attack of their car as it was driving on a highway near the city of Palermo.

Get This Happened straight to your inbox ✉️ each day! Sign up here.

Watch VideoShow less
Society
Giuseppe Legato

A New Calabrian Mob Alliance Sparks Shocking Violence — And More Women Victims

United to colonize the region’s north, two allied mob families from Calabria's 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate have resumed methods to establish themselves that have been abandoned for years. The result is as bloody as the Italian mob has been in memory.

CASSANO ALL’IONIO — Here in the northern reaches of Calabria, a new mob alliance is combining the old ‘ndrangheta and nomadic criminality that is distinguishing itself by its ferocity.

The ‘ndrina Abruzzese and the ‘ndrina Forastefano, two opposing coschemob families), who had been at war with each other in the early 2000s, have now allied to take over what remains of northern Calabria up to the border with the Basilicata region.

The 44 kilometers of Calabrian coastline between the towns of Villapiana and Rossano are bloodied by a war that hardly anyone talks about, and yet is still fresh.

Cruel, cynical, archaic, harsh: this new hybrid Calabrian mob is back to shooting people in the streets, and it doesn’t spare women. In one year, two have died, bringing the number of victims in the past 24 months to 15.

Watch VideoShow less
Geopolitics
Ginevra Falciani

Anarchist Revival? Italy Risks Turning Alfredo Cospito Into A Martyr For A Lost Cause

Until a few weeks ago, Alfredo Cospito was a faceless holdout from a largely forgotten movement serving a life sentence for two separate attacks in the name of anarchism. But now his hunger strike has become a rallying cry for anarchists across Europe following a series of attacks protesting his prison conditions.

An anonymous telephone call breaks the morning quiet of a newspaper office, warning that a “major bombing” will soon happen in response to the treatment of a jailed anarchist.

As much as it sounds like 1970s Italy, when bombs went off in train stations and piazzas, and politicians and business executives were kidnapped in broad daylight, the telephone call arrived three days ago at the Bologna headquarters of the Italian newspaper Il Resto del Carlino.

It’s the latest twist around the case of Alfredo Cospito, a member of the Informal Anarchist Federation, whose ongoing hunger strike has dominated Italian public debate for the past several weeks, and become a rallying cry for an anarchist movement across Europe that many thought had faded away.

Watch VideoShow less
Society
Niccolò Zancan and Giuseppe Legato

"Here, He Wasn't Hiding" — How Mob Boss Messina Denaro Defied His Fugitive Status

Italy's most-wanted fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro lived in the open in a small town in Sicily, near his birthplace, thanks to widespread silence and complicity from his neighbors. It was essential to evading police for more than 30 years.

CAMPOBELLO DI MAZARA — Matteo Messina Denaro certainly wasn't hiding down at the bottom of some well.

Arrested in January at a clinic in Palermo, Italy’s most-wanted mob boss had been living freely and openly in this small Sicilian town, surrounded by neighbors who somehow never saw him.

Watch VideoShow less
Society
Riley Sparks and Ginevra Falciani

Weird Stuff, Guns & Money: Inside The Hideouts Of Mob Bosses And Fugitive Warlords

After the capture this week of Sicilian Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro, police revealed some notable contents of two of his hideouts after 30 years on the run. There's a long history of discovering the secret lairs and bunkers of the world's Most Wanted bad guys.

Expensive watches, perfumes, designer clothes and sex pills. A day after top Sicilian Mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro was captured after 30 years on the run, police revealed some of the possessions found in the Palermo apartment where he’d been hiding out under a false name.

By Wednesday, Italian daily La Stampa was reporting, police had found a second hideout near Messina Denaro's hometown in the Sicilian province of Trapani, with a secret vault hidden behind a closet, where jewelry, gold and other valuables were found.

Watch VideoShow less
Green
Carl-Johan Karlsson

How The Mafia Is Moving Into Renewables And Other "Clean" Sectors

Mobster shootouts may be a thing of the past, but organized crime is still Italy’s biggest business. And the Mafia has changed its business model, expanding into cybercrime, cryptocurrency and even renewable energy.

As mobster shootouts and drug cartels have gravitated from the top of the evening news to bingeable series on streaming services, it could seem that traditional organized crime networks are in terminal decline. Even on the Italian island of Sicily, where Cosa Nostra essentially invented the modern mob, the attention garnered by high-profile murders in the early 1990s, and the subsequent arrest of some 4,000 mafiosi since, have given way to a lower-profile, less violent Mafia era.

Watch VideoShow less
Society
Carl Karlsson

Nordic Mob? Why Organized Crime Is Exploding In Sweden

While remaining a remarkably safe country, Sweden is facing a recent surge of gang crimes that worries authorities, including a bombing in Gothenburg on Sep. 28th that injured more than 20. The fact that these family-based networks often have roots in North Africa and the Middle East is fueling criticism about the country's immigration policies.


Is this Sweden … or Sicily?

An explosion in a multi-family complex in the western Swedish city of Gothenburg on Tuesday has sparked a national debate over harsher punishment for organized crime.

Watch VideoShow less