Italian police arrest over 100 people in mafia crackdown

Italian police have arrested more than 100 people suspected of Mafia involvement in two separate operations near Rome and in the country’s southern Calabria region.

Authorities said those taken into custody on Friday were accused of crimes such as usury, extortion, drug trafficking and murder.

Police spokesman Mario Viola said the operation in Rome targeted the Fasciani, Triassi and D’Agati clans and it resulted in the arrests of 51 people who helped lead “illegal activities” in the capital and the suburb of Ostia.

In addition, Spanish police arrested one of the bosses of the Triassi clan, Vincenzo, and his wife in Tenerife as well as two other suspects who were seized in Barcelona.

“For practically the past 20 years, members of the Fasciani and Triassi clans have carried out their business in Rome, dividing up the territory in a sort of mafia pax, under which each was able to calmly carry out its own illegal trafficking,” said police in a statement.

In the second operation, which targeted the Ndrangheta mafia gang in the city of Catanzaro, between 50 to 70 people were taken into custody, “including entrepreneurs, politicians and lawyers,” said Viola.

Of those detained in Catanzaro, some were also accused of playing a role in several murders committed during a mafia-on-mafia war between 2005 and 2011 as well as hundreds of acts of extortion.

The notorious Ndrangheta gang has been linked to operations not only in Italy but also across western and northern Europe as well as in the Americas and Australia.