Taranto: "Operation dome"
The State Police of Taranto and the Central Operational Service of the Central Anti-Crime Directorate carried out, following investigations coordinated by the Lecce Anti-Mafia District Directorate, a Custody Ordinance issued by the Court of Lecce, against 22 subjects, responsible for various title of mafia association, of criminal association aimed at the trafficking of drugs and other very serious crimes against the person and property, including robberies, extortion, all aggravated by the mafia method.
Another 27 people are also under investigation in the same criminal proceedings and recipients of a notice of conclusion of the preliminary investigations.
The operation of the Taranto Mobile Squad, in collaboration with the Central Operational Service of the State Police, made it possible to disrupt an armed criminal association, which, after the "Impresa" blitz of July 2017, had managed to reorganize itself on the territory of Manduria still affected by the mafia phenomenon and governed by fringes of the Sacra Corona Unita, increasingly oriented to implement a strategy of strengthening their criminal prestige.
From the investigations it emerged that a new organizational set-up of the mafia association operating in Manduria was initiated in which, in the absence of the historical leaders, the top positions were redesigned.
The criminal organization, in recent years, has been able to regenerate itself through the establishment of a board - a real "Dome" - whose undisputed exponents, by resorting to intimidation, or by exploiting the associative bond, have subjected the entire territory of Manduria, achieving full control of illicit drug trafficking, extortion activities (also in the form of the so-called "environmental" extortion) and robberies.
The mafia organization identified represents the "joining" of two Mafia-type criminal groups once in conflict with each other and, however, both attributable, as anticipated, to the "Sacra Corona Unita": the largest Apulian mafia-type association operating in Manduria and its province.
Although it is a direct continuation of the clans (from which it borrows the mafia fame and the consequent force of intimidation), the association in question is characterized by elements of novelty: it makes use of a new form of intimidation, not only predatory and violent but also silent and symbiotic with respect to the social context of reference, preserving and even strengthening the hegemony of the original mafia association also through alliances and pacts signed with criminal groups in neighboring territories.
The investigation demonstrated the evolution of the "mafia method", reducing the use of "manifest action" and normally bloody, the only sign of the force of intimidation, favoring instead the veiled threat of violence.
A mafia association, therefore, which evolves from a predatory stage in which the mafia to impose conditions of subjugation uses violence indiscriminately and constantly, to a symbiotic stage.
It follows that in addition to armed raids, the investigation recorded the existence of "environmental extortion" in which the "evocative" form emerges in which the extortionist does not use the explicit threat, but that deriving from belonging or link with known criminals.
The overall evidence material acquired makes it possible to challenge a large series of fine crimes committed by the mafia organization, which aims, among other things, to achieve total control of the illicit drug market, with a marked propensity also to contaminate the legal economy, recycling the proceeds. Remarkable the availability of weapons by the mafia association, even deadly, kept by the members of the clan and object of numerous kidnappings.
The Crime Prevention Departments of the State Police of Bari and Lecce, the anti-drug and anti-explosive dog units and the 9th Flight Department of Bari as well as the Police Headquarters in whose territories of competence resided some other subjects recipients of the restrictive measures participated in the operation.