Four quizzed over Mafia restaurant shootings

Italian and German police arrested four suspected members of organised crime clans today believed to be involved in the killing of six Italians in Germany.

Two of the suspects were arrested in Italy and two in Germany, officials in both countries said.

According to the ANSA news agency, police were looking for a fifth suspect believed to be directly responsible for the August 15 murders, when six men aged 16 to 38 were shot dead after a party at an Italian restaurant in Duisburg.

Authorities said the killings appeared to be part of a long-running feud between two criminal family clans from Italy’s Calabria region, both believed to belong to the ’ndrangheta syndicate.

The four suspects were believed to be part of one of the feuding families, but were not considered to be directly involved in the shooting, according to ANSA.

Two suspects were apprehended in San Luca, the small town where the two rival clans of the ’ndrangheta, the local version of the Sicilian Mafia, are based.

The other two were picked up in North-Rhine Westfalia, the German state where Duisburg is located, police spokesman Achim Blaettermann said.