Italian police crush attempts to rebuild mafia

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.

In an operation codenamed Perseus, around 1,200 police backed by helicopters and dog handlers arrested mafia clan leaders and members in Sicily’s Palermo region and in Tuscany, in central Italy.

The sweep followed a nine-month probe, Palermo police said, adding that those detained were suspected of wanting to revive Italy’s largest crime syndicate, whose last known “boss of bosses”, Bernado Provenzano, was arrested in April 2006.