zecchinetta

Following the Duisburg incident anti-Mafia investigators have concluded that Cosa Nostra and the ‘Ndrangheta are doing more in Germany than just using the country as a ‘time out’ stop off: Germany, Belgium, and Holland are suddenly realizing that they are fundamental bases of operation, critical links in Mafia organizations’ drug-dealing and money-laundering operations. But, with cosche and ‘ndrine business so deeply embedded in northern Europe, what the investigators and politicians fail to acknowledge is that their latest ‘eureka’ moment is, well, fucking laughable.

San Luca is the archetypical southern Italian mountain town. It is Corleone, Prizzi, Lercara Friddi, Leonforte, Nicosia, Agira… It has the same winding alleyways, and these days the only people to be seen are widows in black. All of the young men in town had vanished by Saturday. According to friends in the area, the sole activity has been at a roadblock at the entrance to the town manned by Carabinieri cradling sub-machine pistols, and mourners turning up to pay their respects at the house of the parents of 16-year-old Francesco Giorgi, the youngest victim in Duisburg. An Italian television crew was asked to leave town. Not even the parish priest, Father Pino Strangio, was to be found in his church. But then, Francesco was Pino’s cousin’s son.

The curate, Father Stephen Fernando, from Tamil Nadu in India, has been in San Luca for nine years. It is, he conceded to the press, “a difficult village.” San Luca, in the words of a study published in 2005 by Italy’s domestic intelligence service, is “the cradle of [‘Ndrangheta] and its epicenter.” Above the town is the shrine of Our Lady of Polsi, the spiritual focus of an organization that leans heavily on religious symbolism – titles given to ranking ‘ndranghetisti include “saint” and “evangelist

Every year, in early September, towns and villages shut down throughout the Aspromonte region of Calabria. The ‘Ndrangheta closes shop. This is a sacred time of year in when civilians and ‘ndrina members alike pay their respects to the Madonna of the Mountain. In the town of San Luca, recently made infamous by the Duisburg killings, the bosses, the 'ndranghetisti, the lawyers, politicians, priests, and farmers will all come together at the shrine, in the mountains behind the town. This annual ritual is a beautiful sight, richly funded, replete with procession, church service, and feast. The event is marked by a traditional tarantella – a hypnotic, symbolic, and highly ritualized medieval dance.

Tourists descend on the Aspromonte for this event. Coaches unload hundreds of Catholic tourists who come to the area in order to participate in the religious festival. But what may seem like a quaint folk festival to tourists or a religious observance to ‘Catholi-tourists’ is far more ritualized and symbolic. It is in the performance of the tarantella that the current power structure of the local ‘ndrine is revealed: Whomever the ‘ndrina leader invites into the dancing circle – and the timing of that invitation – speaks volumes about rank and status in local, regional, and international ‘ndrine hierarchies. This year German investigators will also be showing a keen interest in traditional rituals at San Luca. Most of the men who will be dancing in the San Luca Tarantella are members of the two 'Ndrangheta ‘ndrine involved in the Duisburg incident: the Vottari-Pelle-Romeo and Strangio-Nirta ‘ndrine.

Enzo Ciconte, the author of several books on the ‘Ndrangheta and a former consultant to the Italian parliament’s anti-mafia commission, believes that the importance of the San Luca feud has, until now, been underestimated. “It is the ‘families’ of San Luca who have always decided if other families are, or are not, part of the ‘Ndrangheta. If, say, in Britain, or Holland, or Germany you wish to set up a new locale (clan), and you don’t get the approval of the ‘Ndrangheta of San Luca, then your gang is not part of the ‘Ndrangheta.”

In the past, he said, the town’s clans had been on sufficiently good terms to be able to reach common decisions. But by dividing them bitterly, the feud had cast doubt on who properly represented the San Luca ‘Ndrangheta, thereby creating an issue of legitimacy at the very heart of the syndicate. Such was the pressure to resolve the feud, said Ciconte, that barring a combination of internal mediation and concerted intervention by the state, “there could now be a bloodbath”. Small wonder the young men have vanished from the streets of San Luca.

As for the mayor, Giuseppe Mammoliti of the Left Democrats, when asked if he had a comment on the events in Duisburg said, guardedly, “What sort of comment?” He is, incidentally, on vacation at an undisclosed location. “I am truly sorry about what has happened. That is all. Nothing else.”

In the wake of the Duisburg bloodshed Giuliano Amato, the Italian Minister for the Interior (who I railed against in early August) promptly named the two warring ‘ndrine, and the motive behind the killings. Italian investigators complained that German prosecutors have been far too hesitant to proceed against the types of gangsters believed to be behind the Duisburg killings. In fact, experts with Germany's Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) had already identified the Da Bruno restaurant as a "base for criminal drug and counterfeit money activities" a full 15 years ago, but it apparently never took any action.

One week ago, last Tuesday night, the Da Bruno restaurant in Duisburg was the scene of late-night festivities to celebrate the birthday of Tommaso Francesco Venturi – a trainee who would turn 18 at midnight. The restaurant manager, 38-year old Sebastiano Strangio, closed the restaurant at 2:15 a.m. A few minutes later Strangio and five other men – including the newly 18-year old Venturi – walked to their cars parked outside Da Bruno’s. These would be the last steps for Strangio, Venturi, the two waiters (Marco and Francesco Pergola, 19 and 21), and two visitors from Italy (Francesco Giorgi, 16, and Marco Marmo, 25).

Police investigators presume that there were probably two killers waiting for the men in an alley. Investigators are working with the hypothesis that the six victims got into their cars and were immediately attacked. The hit men fired at least 70 shots, fired from automatic weapons. The bullets pierced windshields, metal and the heads, abdomens and lower bodies of the victims -- until all six were dead. They then shot each victim once in the head for good measure. The authorities insist they are following many leads in their investigation, but by late last week German police were clearly focusing on the connection to San Luca and wading into the midst of a protracted faida – a lethal tit-for-tat feud between two San Luca ‘ndrine – the Vottari-Pelle-Romeo and the Strangio-Nirta.

Maria Strangio’s tomb bears the photograph of a young woman with lush, dark hair wearing pendant earrings. It also has an inscription: “Your beautiful youth was shattered when everyone was smiling at you. Death carried you far away. It separated you from your loved ones who every hour repeat your name in the silent, empty house where everyone remembers you.” She was murdered in an ambush on Christmas Day last year. Her loved ones’ angry refusal to forget should remain uppermost in the minds of investigators in Duisburg. Maria Strangio came from one of two ‘ndrine enmeshed in the faida. The Duisburg victims were from the other.

Police speculate that Marco Marmo was the principal target of the Duisburg attack. Italian investigators say that Marmo was involved in the murder of 33-year-old Maria Strangio, who was the wife of Giovanni Luca Nirta. Immediately after her killing Marmo fled to relatives in Duisburg. Maria Strangio’s widower is believed to be the head of the Strangio-Nirta ‘ndrina. This explains why Marmo, if he were the assassin of Maria Strangio, would have had to leave San Luca in order to escape the revenge of the Strangio-Nirta ‘ndrina. Authorities believe that the real target was Maria Strangio’s husband, Giovanni Luca Nirta. A failed attempt to kill the boss of an ‘ndrina is a big fucking deal, generally a death sentence. But accidentally killing his wife in the process, well, Germany isn’t far enough. Nor is Brazil. He will make it his life’s purpose to avenge that one. No wonder the Duisburg hit men made absolutely sure that Marmo was dead.

There had been earlier victims in the faida since it began 15 years before Maria Strangio was killed. One was her father, Antonio. But the killing of Maria gave the feud an unprecedented lethal vigor. Even before the Duisburg incident, five people have died since Christmas in presumed vendetta killings in and around San Luca. The fear now is of an explosion of reciprocal violence that spreads beyond San Luca to encompass other towns, and other ‘ndrine. “God help us,” said a man believed to be the sexton, quoted in the press but declining to give his name. “We hope for peace. But this is a land forgotten by God and man alike.”

'Ndranghetisti are all too familiar with the journey northward. By 2000, some 160 members of the group were officially registered in Germany, including close relatives of ‘ndrine leaders. According to an internal BKA document from 2000, the 'Ndrangheta has already expanded its operations from its original base in Duisburg to points throughout Germany. One of those places is the eastern city of Erfurt, an 'Ndrangheta base in Germany since the mid-1990s. When police stormed the Paganini Restaurant in 1996 as part of the investigation of an ‘Ndrangheta-linked murder, they encountered their boss, Richard Dewes, the state's interior minister at the time, and even his boss, then-state Governor Bernhard Vogel. A noticeably large number of the staff at that Erfurt restaurant is of Calabrian descent. Many waiters share the same last names as known ‘ndrine, whose members figure prominently in Italian police investigation files. Some of the employees at Paganini’s previously worked in the Da Bruno pizzeria or in other Duisburg restaurants, which Italian authorities believe to be controlled by 'Ndrangheta ‘ndrine.

Furthermore ‘ndranghetisti are well established in the ranks of the Erfurt upper middle class. They have acted as sponsors for the local football club for some time now and are known for the generosity of their donations to local orphanages and cultural institutions. According to Italian and German investigators ‘ndranghetisti hold significant real estate portfolios in Erfurt and are the owner-operators of numerous stores and restaurants throughout the city, particularly in the prime real estate market of it’s thriving downtown area. Investigators believe that the mafia's bases in Germany are used primarily for clandestine financial transactions. This is clearly a dangerous imperative to presume and will surely detract from any decent investigation. More importantly by attempting to close down the money-laundering aspects of German ‘ndranghetisti the authorities will meet with fierce resistance and are exposing themselves – politicians and police – to the type of shutdown witnessed in Sicily in the early 1990’s.

In 1999, the state Office of Criminal Investigation in Stuttgart investigated an Italian from San Luca who had allegedly laundered millions through a local bank. The man claimed that he managed a profitable car dealership, and authorities were unable to prove that the business was not the source of his money. Seven years ago the BKA concluded that "the activities of this 'Ndrangheta clan represent a multi-regional criminal phenomenon." But despite their certainty, they have done little since then to address the problem.

One anti-Mafia investigator, Salvatore Boemi, has been outspoken about German authorities’ inadequacy in preventing the spread of ‘ndrine throughout Germany. He has said in the press that the Germans have "underestimated" the organization in the past. Alberto Cisterna, of Italy's Direzione Nazionale Antimafia, agrees, calling German investigators' approach to dealing with the 'Ndrangheta "very soft." Ercole D'Alessandro, an anti-Mafia police specialist in Calabria, says that the German judiciary should "finally realize" that quick action is needed. The ‘Ndrangheta is not just using Germany as a "place to relax," but "also as a field of operations," especially for drug deals, says Hermann von Langsdorff, a federal prosecutor and German member of Eurojust, a European Union investigative unit.

In most of the ‘Ndrangheta cases brought in Germany prosecutors have only managed to pin individual crimes to individual ‘ndranghetisti, rather than to a group or an ‘ndrina. German criminal laws offer much more latitude to prosecutors than they have actually used against organized crime. But it is extremely difficult to build a case based on charges of forming or being a member of a foreign criminal organization. And 'ndranghetisti adhere strictly to normative codes of honor, loyalty, and silence, what most civilians would understand as the code of omertà. This makes it extraordinarily difficult to find evidence sufficiently airtight to satisfy the strict standards of German judges. And, lets not forget, the ‘Ndrangheta are very adept at ensuring that they dot all their i’s and cross all their t’s. It would come as no surprise to learn that they have a few judges in pocket already: The ‘Ndrangheta was implicated in about two dozen criminal investigations in Germany in 2006; but not a single conviction has been handed down.

Part of the problem is that there are few German specialists who understand how ‘ndrine are structured. Shit, there are few Italian anti-Mafia investigators who understand ‘ndrine or Sicilian cosche structure so how the hell can the Germans do any better?! The German cases being brought against ‘ndranghetisti are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the true scope of the ‘Ndrangheta's dealings in Germany. In 1999, police in Cologne seized assets worth about €9 million ($12.5 million) from a Calabrian who, according to the BKA, made his fortune in the construction business which was already widely known to be controlled by ‘ndrine.

An ‘Ndrangheta pentito, Giorgio Basile, has been doing his damnedest to assist the authorities in any way he can. I don’t care what anyone thinks about Cosa Nostra or ‘Ndrangheta, love ‘em or hate ‘em, a snitch is a snitch is a snitch – the lowest most dishonest and dishonorable scum to exist. Basile is that sorta dude. He once belonged to the Carelli ‘ndrine in Corigliano Calabro, and was arrested in southern Germany in 1997. When questioned by the Bavarian state Office of Criminal Investigation, Basile admitted to taking part in more than 30 murders. In return for identifying many fellow ‘ndranghetisti in Germany, he was accepted into the Italian witness protection program. His testimony in Italy helped put more than 50 ‘ndranghetisti behind bars, but most of his former accomplices in Germany have remained at-large to this day. Basile is a very rare breed within ‘Ndrangheta. Snitches are extremely rare, more so than in Cosa Nostra. Moreover, there has never been a single high-ranking ‘ndranghetista turn pentito. Never. This plays a big part in the difficulty prosecutors have. It’s also what fascinates me. How does the group inspire such loyalty, almost unheard of elsewhere in the world.

Basile most recently testified in Germany against an alleged ‘Ndrangheta drug trafficker. Basile was the prosecutions star witness, and gave a video testimony from a secret location. The big point to be taken from the Basile case, and his testimony in other cases, is that it highlights just how incompetent is the intelligence of German investigators as it pertains to the ‘Ndrangheta: The judges were unfamiliar with the name of Basile’s ‘ndrine – didn’t even understand that it represented a collective rather than a conventional family. Furthermore, prosecutors didn’t bother to contact their Italian counterparts for information on the ‘Ndrangheta. Moreover, when the district court in Duisburg convicted Basile of one of the many murders, the judges wrote that he was apparently a member of a criminal organization known as the "Trangeda." They were referring, erroneously, to the 'Ndrangheta. What a cluster fuck!

Following the capture of Bernardo Provenzano 17 months ago, and his partner Salvatore Riina several years ago, anti-Mafia investigations have revealed to Italian prosecutors the extent of migration of Sicilian Mafiosi. Germany is a popular destination for Sicilian Mafiosi as well as for Calabrian ‘ndranghetisti. According to the BKA, Riina and Provenzano were "in Germany on several occasions." In fact it has been rumored that, when Provenzano's wife returned to his hometown of Corleone in 1993, the Provenzano children were more fluent in German than Italian. Not for nothing though, they also speak fucking good English & French.

Numerous 'ndranghetisti have put down roots in Germany, working as innkeepers, pizzeria owners and hoteliers, especially in the industrial Ruhr region. German investigators have had detailed knowledge -- from Italian sources -- of the 'Ndrangheta's close ties to Duisburg since at least 2000. Virtually all members of the old ‘ndrine from San Luca, and nearby Locri, who have moved to the Ruhr region in recent decades are on record. According to the Italian authorities, “Duisburg has long served as a washing machine for dirty money” from the drug and weapons trades. Sebastiano Strangio, the owner of Da Bruno restaurant, was one of the men murdered in Duisburg last week. He came to Germany from Locri in 1987. His name first surfaced in a 1998 German investigation into a murder in Borgia, when investigators discovered Strangio's number stored in the victim's mobile phone. He was detained for a short time in October 2005 in Amsterdam, where he was charged with cocaine trafficking. Yet – and this comes as no surprise to anyone who has spent time around Sicilian or Calabrian uomini d’onore – Strangio's unsuspecting German neighbors remembered him as the friendly Italian from next door, as helpful as he was charming. He called all women "bella signora" and used to wink at them. He and his associates "were only noticeable because of the nice clothes they wore," says a former neighbor.

No one believes that the hail of bullets that killed the six men last week marks the end of the vendetta. Gianni Venturi, the father of the murdered restaurant trainee, has called his sons death “senseless." He had spent that afternoon picking up a silver ring that he had planned to give to his son for his 18th birthday. But his son was murdered shortly after 2 am & his father never had the chance. Venturi has said that he plans to place the ring on his dead son's finger as soon as the forensic pathologists release the body. Will there be revenge? Gianni Venturi, as eloquent as he is bitter, has been silent when asked the question.

Wolfgang Gatzke, head of the state Office of Criminal Investigation in Düsseldorf, fears that there could be "acts of revenge on German soil." With the help of BKA agents and Italian investigators, Gatzke's team is trying to figure out which Italians in the area belong to which ‘ndrine – in other words, which of them could use police protection. Their goal is to save lives – civilian or ‘ndranghetista.

By the end of last week, hundreds of bouquets had already been placed on the pavement in front of the Da Bruno restaurant. When a young man added two gerbera daisies to the pile, he murmured: "It isn't over yet."

A wax sculpture of two black fists holding a rolled cigarette had also been placed with the flowers in front of the restaurant. An unaccustomed sight in Germany, the cigarette is frequently seen at Mafia funerals in Italy. It is a sign of respect from the members of the family – ‘ndrina or cosca, it’s a common symbolism throughout the world of the Italian Mafia. The cigarette is an ominous sign for the streets of Duisburg: it signifies that the deceased will not lack for anything in the afterworld.

It also symbolizes the revenge that will be taken in this life.

When they dance the Tarantella at San Luca this September the battle lines will have already been drawn, the first steps to revenge will have already been taken. All the roadblocks in the world have no impact. The underground tunnels connecting the towns and villages of the Aspromonte are well maintained and Carabinieri Alfa Romeo’s don’t stand in the way down there. And if the vendetta continues to be timed in accordance with religious festivals this could be the most symbolic tarantella ever danced. But that would be too easy, too obvious, and it’s exactly what the authorities expect.

Sicilian or Calabrian, the ferrigno duro is much more fucking brilliant than that. They may have been forgotten by God and by man alike; but they refuse to be ignored by either.