BEFORE DAWN ON A JUNE MORNING in 2010, police burst through the high security gates of a palazzo belonging to a notable mafia family on the edge of a small town in Calabria. As agents swarmed through the building, turning the place over, family members moved frantically to hide any evidence. Maria, the family's 12-year-old daughter, was given a page ripped from a notebook. It was a list of debts owing. She was told to hide it: "Put it in your knickers, they won't touch you." Her brother Cosimo, 14, watched in helpless rage as his father, mother, even his grandmother, were handcuffed and led out to the waiting police cars.
After the arrests, Cosimo was the only male family member outside prison, and it became his responsibility to collect money for the lawyers' fees. He was a baby boss with his own driver, visiting local businesses who were on the family's books, and demanding payment with menaces. "He was recognised as the boss," says journalist Dario Cirrincione. "If he went to a bar in the village, older men would get up to greet him. People waited on him, drove him around, did anything he needed. This sort of treatment turns these kids into little kings." The Calabrian mafia, the 'Ndrangheta, is based on family groups in small towns along the coastline of Italy's toe. The area is littered with half-built factories, projects paid for by state development funds and abandoned once the 'Ndrangheta got its hands on the money. Since taking control of the port at Gioia Tauro on the west coast, the organisation has become one of the biggest importers of cocaine to Europe.
The authorities have made sweeping arrests over the past decade, and staged a series of maxi trials in reinforced bunkers, involving hundreds of defendants. But the family structure means the organisation is hard to dismantle. As fathers and grandfathers are serving life sentences, many in high-security jails, the younger members are starting their criminal careers ever earlier.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 28, 2024-Ausgabe von The Guardian Weekly.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 28, 2024-Ausgabe von The Guardian Weekly.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Friendship interrupted
They were best mates. Then one had a baby, while the other struggled to conceive. They share their brutally honest takes on what happens when motherhood affects friendship
KERNELS OF HOPE
During the siege of Leningrad, botanists in charge of an irreplaceable seed collection, the first of its kind, had to protect it from fire, rodents-and hunger
A new horizon' The inverse link between cancer and dementia
Scientists have long been aware of a curious connection between these common and feared diseases. At last, a clearer picture is emerging
Across the universe
Samantha Harvey won the Booker prize with a novel set in space. Yet, she says, Orbital is actually 'a celebration of Earth's beauty with a pang of loss'
Frank Auerbach 1931 -2024
Saved from the Holocaust, this artist captured the devastation of postwar Britain as ifits wounds were his own but he ultimately found salvation in painting
Seven lessons I've learned after 28 years as economics editor
Margaret Thatcher was Britain's prime minister and Neil Kinnock was leader of the Labour party.
Droughtstricken dam leaves economies powerless
A ll is not well with the waters of Lake Kariba, the world's human-made lake largest A punishing drought has drained the huge reservoir close to record lows, raising the prospect that the Kariba Dam, which powers the economies of Zambia and Zimbabwe, may have to shut down for the first time in its 65-year history.
Let this be the end of these excruciating celebrity endorsements
I wish celebrities would learn the art of the French exit. But they can't, which is why Eva Longoria has announced she no longer lives in America. \"I get to escape and go somewhere,\" she explained.
Alive, but unable to thrive under absolute patriarchy
Since the Taliban returned to power, women and girls have tried defiance, but despair at their harshly restricted lives
‘It's tragic’ Reflection in the wake of Amsterdam violence
Carrying signs scrawled with messages urging unity, they laid white roses at the statue of Anne Frank, steps away from the home where her family had hidden from Nazi persecution.
