In bed with the MAFIA
Amid the warm, fragrant hills of Calabria, deep in southern Italy, some of the most dangerous men on Earth are sitting in steel cages, their tough, sun-bronzed faces betraying little beyond a leisurely contempt for the proceedings around them.
This heavily-guarded courthouse in the old spa town of Lamezia Terme is the setting for the biggest Mafia trial in Italian history, and if the defendants don’t look too worried it is because the past record of such prosecutions suggests a high chance of getting off. The ancient codes of omertà (silence) and clan loyalty have long protected the capi (bosses) of organised crime, feeding their sense of invincibility and frustrating efforts to bring them to justice.
This time, though, the authorities believe they have a secret weapon – a group of women who have turned their backs on the Mafia, and come forward to tell the grisly truth about its activities. There are ex-wives, girlfriends and mothers, most of them raised in the same shadowy world as the Mafiosi, and their emergence may signal the biggest threat the Mob has ever faced.
“These women have lost their fear,” says Nicola Gratteri, head of the investigation which led to the trial. “They are coming out of the darkness. It is a turning point.”
Simple, brutal lives
Behind the beguiling veneer of a simple life among vineyards and olive groves, Calabria’s Mafia has become perhaps the richest, most ruthless and powerful crime syndicate
