Six mafiosi arrested in plot to kill Italian interior minister Angelino Alfano

Italian police arrested six members of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra mafia as part of an inquiry that uncovered a threat to kill interior minister Angelino Alfano.

The arrests were made in a dawn raid in Corleone.

Telephone wiretaps recorded members of the gang talking about an attack on the Sicily-born minister, Palermo prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi said. One suspect was allegedly recorded saying: “If it’s all agreed, we’ll hit him, right in the head.”

Lo Voi said talking about an assassination attempt would be an exaggeration, partly because the mobsters had discussed striking when Alfano was completely unprotected by bodyguards, which was not likely to happen. “You could say they were venting, but we need to grasp the significance of it.”

The grudge against Alfano stemmed from his readiness to toughen jail conditions for people convicted of mafia association, under the “41 bis” regime which suspends some of the usual rules on how to treat prisoners, subjecting them to near-total isolation.

The regime is a particularly touchy subject within the Cosa Nostra, which was Italy’s most powerful mafia group in the 1980s and 1990s, but has been overtaken by the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta.

Former bosses Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano have been imprisoned under the regime.