Restaurant massacre hitman held in Holland

A hitman wanted for killing six people in a bloody feud between Mafia clans was arrested today near Amsterdam.

Giovanni Strangio is accused of shooting the men from the ’ndrangheta outside an Italian restaurant in the German town of Duisburg in 2007.

Strangio was held in a joint operation by German, Italian and Dutch police holed up with his wife and child in a house in Diemen, just outside the Dutch capital.

Police found a gun and ammunition in the house, but Strangio did not resist arrest.

“He has been one of the most-wanted men in Germany and Italy,” said the Dutch National Prosecutor’s Office.

The killings stemmed from a feud between two rival families and drew international attention to the ’ndrangheta, a crime syndicate based in the southern Italian region of Calabria.

Some investigators say the ’ndrangheta is now more powerful than the Sicilian Mafia.

Strangio’s brother-in-law Francesco Romeo was also arrested in the raid.

Both men will appear before an investigating judge in Amsterdam in a closed sitting on Monday as the first step toward their extradition. It is not yet clear where Strangio will be sent.

“Both Germany and Italy have asked for his extradition,” said a Dutch spokesman. “The court in Amsterdam is handling the case now.”

Strangio has been a fugitive since the Duisburg murders, and Romeo, 41, has been on the run since 1997. He is accused of criminal association and drug trafficking.

Prosecutors said Strangio kept a low profile in the Dutch city where he was hiding from justice.

“The fugitive Italian only occasionally went outside and always in disguise,” prosecutors said, indicating they may have had him under observation for some time.

Amsterdam appears popular as a hiding place for wanted Italian mob suspects.

Last November Giuseppe Nirta, the head of the Nirta crime clan, was arrested in the city after 10 years on the run.

Nirta was wanted for evading a 14-year prison sentence on an Italian drug trafficking conviction and has since been extradited to Italy.

The Nirta clan, of San Luca, has been involved for years in a turf war among ’ndrangheta crime syndicate families.