Police dismantle powerful Sicilian clan and prevent homicide

The riflemen executed a precise blow to the Sicilian mafia, by arresting eight members of a clan based in the city in southern Italy. In addition, according to official sources reported on Monday, the intervention of the police also served to prevent a homicide of a man.

Among the detainees, all accused of mafia association and drug trafficking, possession and sale of illegal weapons, extortion, injuries and ill-treatment, is Massimiliano Ficano, the head of the Bagheria family, a large town at the gates of Palermo.

According to investigators, the Bagheria clan “had undertaken to keep control of the territory, imposing the commission of extortion and, above all, assuming the strict management of the places where drugs were sold”.

In the region, they added, only subjects “authorized” by Cosa Nostra operate, who are obliged to periodically pay a fixed quota of services, explained the riflemen in a note. As it has been specified, it was “its main source of profit”, with the management of betting centers.

The operations were controlled directly by Ficano, who he has never been exposed personally. He delegated tasks to his most trusted collaborators, the researchers explained.

“What was obtained from the crimes committed also served to ensure the livelihood of relatives of detainees, a ‘sacred’ duty of the leaders in freedom, because, if this delicate task is not fulfilled, the bond of ‘omertá’ would falter. (silence) internal and, consequently, the solidity of Cosa Nostra “, they detailed.

A man in power

Ficano, who in the past was responsible for helping to hide the late boss of Cosa Nostra Bernardo Provenzano, missing for 43 years, had taken advantage of the power vacuum generated by the police activity to impose their decisions and violent methods to the family.

The investigations which led to “Operation Persephone” have accelerated in recent days, after having known the plan to assassinate a local criminal that they considered “little inclined to respect the ‘rules’ imposed by the mafia organization” and who had “authorized themselves to publicly challenge the boss”.

“Under Ficano’s command, six subjects brutally beat him, causing trauma to his head and hand.” The man attacked, “far from adopting a submissive behavior despite the aggression of the ‘warnings’, decided to arm himself with an ax and made known his intention to set fire to a room recently inaugurated by the chief” .

For this reason, he was “condemned” by the family and his murder “planned in detail”, although he was ultimately not executed due to police intervention.

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