Italian killer suspected of mafia ties arrested in France

Edgardo Greco, 63, is suspected of belonging to the notorious ‘Ndrangheta’, a powerful mafia organization in Calabria, southern Italy.

He is wanted in Italy to serve a life sentence for the murders of Stefano and Giuseppe Bartolomeo, “as part of the mafia war between the Pino Senna and Perna Plano gangs that marked the early 1990s.” Accused of attempted murder of Emiliano Mosciaro. Interpol said.

Italian police say the Bartolomeo brothers were beaten to death with iron bars in a fish warehouse.

Greco’s arrest in central France came with support for Italy and France from the Interpol-run Interpol-run Cooperation for the Ndrangheta Project (I-CAN), which promotes police cooperation among its 195 member states. .

Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, quoted in a statement by Interpol, said the arrest demonstrated his country’s commitment to “fighting all forms of organized crime and finding dangerous fugitives”.

According to Interpol, the Ndrangheta is considered Italy’s most widespread and powerful mafia group, operating worldwide and with strong ties to the cocaine trade from South America to Europe.

I-CAN’s job is to raise awareness of Ndrangheta and its tactics, share police intelligence and dismantle networks and operations.

According to Italian media, the arrest of Greco, who worked at a pizza restaurant at night under an assumed name, was followed by Italian police dismantling the “Ndrangheta mafia ring”, which controls vast swaths of southern Calabria, and killed more than 250 assets. €1 million ($270 million).

Police and prosecutors said 56 people had been arrested, many of them already in prison, for a range of crimes including mafia-related conspiracy, extortion, kidnapping, bribery and possession of weapons.

Greco’s arrest comes just over two weeks after Italian police arrested Matteo Messina Denaro, one of the most notorious bosses of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra mafia. He had been on the run for his 30 years.

A 60-year-old man was arrested after visiting a clinic where he was receiving treatment in the Sicilian capital Palermo