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Italian police said Thursday they arrested 19 alleged members of a Nigerian mob, including leaders of a clan that had formed alliances with other mafias and violently punished anyone who rebelled.
As part of an operation dubbed "Burning Flame" and coordinated by police from Bologna and Turin, more than 300 police officers carried out arrests and raids in nine cities in northern Italy, from Bergamo to Modena, via Ravenna and Parma.
A two-year investigation – helped significantly by an inside man who provided information to the investigators – "has allowed us to destroy much of what the Nigerian community calls the" Maphite "cult," said the police in a statement. .
He pointed out that the acronym stands for Maximum Academic Performance, Highly Train Coach, Executioner.
"Among those arrested were personalities who played a leading role in the criminal organization.
"Those who decided the new initiations, who ran the prostitution networks, who forcibly dominated the other criminal organizations, who managed drug trafficking in the city squares," he said.
Fifty other suspects were under investigation, he added.
Police said the Nigerian crowd had used "an urban guerrilla war that went on for days at a time" to maintain territorial control.
The "sect" was just one of many foreign organized crime groups that had adopted Italian mafia codes, the police said.
Although they have much in common, they are structured independently and "have a strong rivalry," he added.
– & # 39; Green Bible & # 39; –
Maphite was founded in the 1980s – along with other Nigerian gangs such as Black Ax and the Vikings – before turning into a fully organized group of criminals in the 1990s, police said.
It has adopted the moniker Green Circuit Association to hide its international expansion and is now spread in many countries around the world.
The most well-known gangsters are known in gang jargon under the names of Chief Leader, MP Don, Checker (Treasurer) and Fire – who is responsible for giving orders while an executive committee executes them. .
Members must follow strict rules of conduct set out in the so-called "Green Bible", protected by the leader.
"New members are initiated according to specific rituals and treason is punishable by corporal or murderous punishment," police said.
The rituals included new members beaten, then asked to swear allegiance by holding burning paper, using the words "if I reveal our secrets, this fire will burn me and everything I own," Italian media reports quoted investigators.
Four sub-sets of the Maphite have been identified: the "Vatican family" in Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany, the "Latin family" to the northwest, "the empire of the families of Rome" in the center of the Italy and the "lighthouse of the Sicilian family". the islands, they said.
Maphite has close ties to Nigeria, so those who cross it fear reprisals not only in Italy but also in that country, the police said.
Paolo Borgna, deputy prosecutor in Turin, said foreign mafias "are born and develop by protecting their compatriots and developing a kind of parallel, cruel and criminal justice".
"This is a characteristic common to all mafias: protection is offered, compensation is demanded, protection is imposed and, finally, those who do not accept it are punished," he told reporters at a press conference.
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He added that Maphite had a common fund to which the new members had subscribed upon their accession.
"It's not a sophisticated mafia … but it should not be underestimated. It must be contained now, "he added.
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Italy's far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, has praised the "maxi-operation", saying: "We do not need this type of thing." The ports are closed, the prisons are open.
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