‘Mafia plotted to kill mayor’

Gela, April 24 – Mafia bosses in this southern Sicilian city planned to kill its mayor because of his anti-Mafia drives, police said Friday.

The top clan in Gela, irked by Rosario Crocetta’s clampdown on rackets and his anti-Mob press campaigns, were reportedly poised to carry out their assassination attempt when police moved in.

”We had to act with some urgency,” a police spokesman said after two people were arrested.

Crocetta, 58, a former Communist now in Italy’s largest centre-left party, the Democratic Party, has been fighting Mob infiltration since he was first elected in 2003 to govern the port city of some 80,000 people midway between Agrigento and Siracusa.

Now under round-the-clock police protection, he has called on Italy’s institutions ”not to leave Gela on its own”.

Crocetta received statements of support from across the political spectrum after the news from Gela.

The city 85 km south of Caltanissetta has been rated as one of Sicily’s most Mob-active spots but Crocetta has stressed that ”the overwhelming majority of our citizens are hard-working and decent people”.

Italy’s Anti-Mafia chief, Piero Grasso, said the plot to murder Crocetta – who is Italy’s first openly gay mayor – highlighted ”the risks run by those who put up a serious fight against the Mafia”. The Emmanuello clan also wanted to murder several businessmen who had stood up to them in the port, which has an important oil refinery, police said.

The probe that led to the arrests also uncovered evidence of the clan preying on Sicilian companies that won public works contracts in northern Italy and especially Milan.

They were taking protection money from, among others, the firm performing maintenance on one of Milan’s main water lines, police said.

Grasso said that Mafia recycling of profits in northern Italy was widespread and companies often dodged anti-Mafia controls by moving north after installing new frontmen in place of Mob-tainted executives.

Source: ansa

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