Italian police catch mafia initiation

rites on camera leading to arrests

Secret mafia initiation rites have been caught on camera for the first time by Italian police,
who on Tuesday arrested 40 suspected gangsters in raids across the north of the country.
The arrests, on charges of criminal association, illegal arms sales and extortion, followed a
two-year investigation using wire-taps and hidden cameras in locations known to be
frequented by mobsters, police said.
For the first time the swearing-in ceremonies have been recorded live, Milan prosecutor
Ilda Boccassini told journalists at a press conference following raids which saw 37 people
landed behind bars and another three placed under house arrest.
For the first time we heard it from the voice of the mafia, instead of relying on details from
police informants, she said.
Those arrested are believed to belong to three clans based near Milan but affiliated with the
Calabrian Ndrangheta, an organised crime group made up of networks of hundreds of family
gangs even more feared and secretive than the Sicilian Mafia.
Police said the arrests were fresh proof of the deadly southern groups expansion into the
rich industrial north of the country. Those in handcuffs include a 17-year old boy and boss
Giuseppe Larosa, known by the nickname Peppe the Cow, according to Italian media
reports.
The video and audio recordings revealed the swearing in of Ndrangheta mobsters to an elite
membership known as Santa.
New members swore allegiance in the silence of the night and under the light of the stars
and splendour of the moon to safeguard my wise brothers.
An unnamed boss leading the rite in police videos published on Italian newspaper websites
can be heard telling the new Santa that they are now expected to be their own executioners
should they stray from the Ndranghetas code.
From now on it will not be other men who judge you, you will judge yourselves, the man
says.
In what he describes as the oath of poison, he says there are two alternatives open to the
disloyal: Either you poison yourselves or you take this (gun) which shoots. There must
always be a bullet reserved; one for you.

Boccassini said the Santas affiliation is in their DNA and under their skin and they can leave
the Ndrangheta either by collaborating with the state or through death.
The name Ndrangheta comes from the Greek for courage or loyalty. Its tight clan structure
has made it famously difficult to penetrate.
She referred to a conversation wiretapped in July last year, where boss Michelangelo
Chindamo was heard saying that the music may change but the rest remains ... we can
never change.
He warned mobsters with him that having a mobile phone in your pocket ... is like having a
policeman in your pocket, and cited anti-mafia magistrate Boccassini and police wiretaps as
exactly the sort of threat the clans faced.
Notebooks were discovered during the police raid which detailed the rites, investigators said.
Boccassini said the proof gathered by the police was so solid that those arrested would be
dealt with under a fast-track trial procedure which would do away with preliminary hearings.