“Foggia Mafia”: this is how the little-known, but the most brutal Italian mafia operates

Lazzaro D’Auria, a farmer from the Puglia region in the south of the country, was shot in the head. Italysuccumbed to mafia pressure.

His resistance to various extortion attempts brought him threats and damage to his property and crops, until at dawn a dozen individuals, led by a gunman, forced him to agree to pay 150,000 euros ($158,000) a year.

But the next day, instead of paying off, he turned to the police, becoming one of the few victims who dared to report on the mafia in the city. nebula. Thus, he was faced with a criminal organization that knows how to remain in the shadows for a long time, despite the fact that it is the most cruel on the peninsula.

“If residents were more involved, mafia the locals are weakened. For 40 years the company fog mafia carries out its activities without interference, although it has suffered several setbacks in the last 6 or 7 years,” said Lazzaro D’Auria, who has been living under police protection since 2017.

“Inhabitants of nebulaFile a complaint!” pleads the 57-year-old businessman, who sees the recent police raids as a positive sign and is convinced that the mafia can be fought if residents can overcome their fears.

The authorities were in no hurry to take this “fourth mafia” seriously (the other three are Cosa Nostra in Sicily, the ‘Ndrangheta in Calabria and the Camorra in Naples), which for a long time was considered a marginal rural phenomenon due to bloody feuds between clans.

But the young Italian criminal organization already had a large province Foggia, with drug trafficking, armed robbery and car theft and extortion. “This is a rudimentary, primitive mafia. Very violent and very aggressive,” said Ludovico Vaccaro, the prosecutor of Foggia.

While the largest mafias have abandoned violent activities and turned to less visible and more profitable activities, even within the legal economy, nebula He is in the first phase.

they kill each other

“Today mafia they have evolved, they fire fewer shots, they follow a more cautious strategy to stay undetected,” says Vaccaro.

“This mafia, on the other hand, still shoots and kills to assert their power in the territory,” he adds.

The term “fog mafiaincludes several groups that operate in different sectors of crime.

Provinces nebulaStretching from Cape Gargagno overlooking the Adriatic Sea to the agricultural plains inland, it is third on Italy’s kill list. Five of the 16 murders committed in the last year are related to the mafia.

“Battalions”, made up of members related by kinship, are divided by geographic area and often cooperate and share extortion proceeds to support their members and their prisoners.

“When conflicts arise over the distribution of illegal proceeds (…), the battalions fight and kill each other,” says a police officer from nebulaMario Gracia.

Each group has its own specialty, from armed robbery of trucks to arson and attacks on shop windows or company vehicles to convince owners to pay.

Farmers like D’Auria often find their olive trees have been cut down, their crops burned, and their livestock stolen.

On the banks of the Gargano, where both tourists from half of Europe and drug shipments from Albania land, mafia it’s especially brutal.

Four years ago, a human skull was placed in front of the municipal building to convey a message to the mayor of Monte Sant’Angelo. A goat’s head pierced by a dagger was sent to the lawyer of the missing victim’s mother the same year. mafia.

According to investigators, the Gargano mafia is known for shooting victims in the face and leaving bodies in underground caves.

fear is spreading

Several drug lords have been imprisoned in recent years, and the authorities are trying to regain control of the territory, although there is still a lot of work to be done.

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi visited nebula in February and promised to increase security, including by installing remote surveillance cameras. According to the prosecutor’s office, more police and courts are needed to combat “an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, as well as socio-cultural poverty.”

The province has only one court with 12,000 pending criminal cases. “In this vast territory, if the state does not control the situation, criminals will,” warns Vaccaro.

In the middle of last year, D’Auria’s grain fields were set on fire, as were three of his tractors. And his bank cut his lines of credit in half because they consider him a “high-risk” client.

Regardless, he sees glimmers of hope in recent arrests and sentencing as they show the state has finally mobilized against it. mafia. “I feel much safer than before, but the fear is still there,” he admitted. (AFP)