Italian police seized assets worth more than €1.6bn from five Sicilian siblings suspected of links to the island’s Cosa Nostra mafia, in one of the biggest ever such operations.

Helena Attlee

The father of two former assistants of celebrity chef Nigella Lawson has been arrested for conspiring to sell cocaine and hash as a member of the Calabrian mafia, investigators said yesterday.

A fugitive Mafia boss wanted by the Italian authorities told officers who arrested him in the UK “I’m not going back, they will kill me”, a court heard.

Mafia Republic Italy’s Criminal Curse:Cosa Nostra, Camorra and ’Ndrangheta from 1946 to the present

A fugitive Mafia boss caught hiding in suburbia was a leader in a murderous gang that “spread terror in Sicily”, a court heard yesterday.

A fugitive Mafia boss who has been hiding in British suburbia for 20 years could be released on bail today amid concerns that there are “significant deficiencies” with the warrant for his arrest.

An Italian priest who stirred consciences with his anti-mafia preaching and was gunned down by mobsters has been honoured by the Vatican as a martyr.

Once the boss of a fearsome mafia clan, Marisa Merico took refuge in Britain and ended up in prison with Rosemary West. She tells Beatrice Borromeo about her time at the top of the ‘Ndrangheta and her new life as a stay-at-home mother

A bomb exploded outside a high school in southern Italy named after a slain anti-Mafia prosecutor as students arrived for class today, killing a teenage girl and wounding several other classmates, officials said.

In One Person

One of Italy’s most wanted fugitive mobsters was captured by police today.

ITALIAN police have arrested the brother of the Sicilian Mafia’s one-time top boss in another blow to Cosa Nostra on the island.

Italian police have arrested the brother of the Sicilian Mafia’s one-time top boss in another blow to Cosa Nostra on the island.

THE FBI launched its biggest crackdown ever on the New York area’s infamous La Cosa Nostra organised crime network, in a massive roundup before daybreak yesterday of 127 alleged mafia members and associates.

FBI agents arrested 127 alleged mafia members in and around New York yesterday in a massive crackdown on the region’s infamous Cosa Nostra network, authorities said.

Police captured one of Sicily’s top Mafia fugitives yesterday, dealing a blow to the island’s Cosa Nostra crime syndicate.

FIGURES revealing the scale of gangland crime show an alarming rise in murders and shootings in the past three months.

IAN RUSH couldn’t settle in Italy; the Welsh striker said it was like living in a foreign country. But San Nicola — the patron saint of Bari — is, they say, a friend to travellers and up to 6,000 Irish soccer fans were certainly making themselves at home in the coastal city yesterday.

SO the Vatican has rejected Bishop Richard Williamson’s carefully worded half-apology for his remarks about the Holocaust. About time, too. He only said sorry for the “distress caused” but there is no sign he has revised his view that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were a Jewish invention. Williamson hasn’t had a change of heart; that much is clear.

An alleged Mafia boss hanged himself in jail, hours after being arrested in a police swoop, officials in Sicily said today.

ITALIAN authorities said yesterday they had crushed a bid to revive the Sicilian mafia after making around 100 arrests in a series of raids, nearly three years on from the capture of the cosa nostra’s supremo.

A huge police operation wrecked plans by the Sicilian Mafia to reform its once all-powerful leadership today.

Italian police have captured the top boss of the powerful 'ndrangheta organised crime syndicate whose clan feuds have bloodied the southern region for years.

DOZENS of alleged Mafia members have been arrested in co-ordinated raids in Italy and New York.

One of Italy's most wanted mafia leaders was shot dead today trying to escape from police.

ITALIAN police burst into the room of a suspected Mafia mobster in Sicily and arrested him as he watched a television show about the arrest of a Mafia boss.

THE arrest of supremo Salvatore Lo Piccolo completed the “decapitation” of the Sicilian Mafia, prosecutor Pietro Grasso said this week.

Police in Italy were today celebrating the arrest of a key Mafia leader tipped to become the syndicate’s next “boss of bosses.”

POLICE arrested 32 suspected mafiosi yesterday and were hunting for eight others linked to a mob feud blamed for the execution-style killings of six Italians in Germany.

Italian police were today carrying out scores of arrests of alleged mobsters in Sicily, including what news reports said were top bosses who had been in touch with Bernardo Provenzano, the reputed No. 1 boss who was arrested earlier this year.

Forensic experts today continued to search the final hideout of reputed Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano for clues that might identify people who helped him hide from authorities for more than 40 years.

The reputed boss of the Italian Mafia Bernardo Provenzano maintained his prison silence today as forensic experts searched his hideout and police arrested three men accused of aiding Italy’s No.1 fugitive.

ITALY’S reputed No 1 Mafia boss was arrested yesterday at a farmhouse in Sicily after evading capture for more than 40 years.

Italy’s reputed No.1 Mafia boss, Bernardo Provenzano, was arrested today in Sicily, the Interior Ministry said.

Defence lawyers cited forensic reports today to argue that suicide, not murder, was the real cause of the 1982 death of the Italian financier known as “God’s banker” because of his close ties to the Vatican.

Police today captured one of Italy’s most dangerous mob fugitives as the state pressed its war on the ’ndrangheta, the Calabrian crime syndicate believed to be overtaking the Sicilian Mafia in dominance.