Italy stops the alleged successor to the godfather Totò Riina

The death in a hospital of Parma a year ago of Totò Riina, the last capo of capos of the Cosa Nostra, he removed the foundations of the organization. The Dome, the central organ which had ceased to meet since 1993 to organize the strategy of the mafia is most famous in the world, do it again on the 29th of may. When all the police reports, pointed out the extreme weakness of the organization-sicilian, the heads of some of the families of Palermo met again to appoint the successor of Riina. The new beacon would be Settimio Mineo, a jeweler relatively well known in Palermo with an old history as the godfather of the sicilian mafia. Its mandate, however, has been as a shooting star. This morning has been arrested in a raid where you have fallen 46 members of the Cosa Nostra.

Mineo was an old acquaintance of the bench. In 1984 he had already been arrested by judge Giovanni Falcone, assassinated shortly after by order of the own Totò Riina. On that occasion, in the interrogation, as he sent the canon gangster, let him go to the legendary magistrate: “I do Not know of what I speak, I fall from the clouds”. The uncle Settimio, as explains the journalist Salvo Palazzolo in Repubblica that he was called, “was a devotee of the Cosa Nostra”. In 1982, he was about to be murder in the same shooting in which he died his brother Giuseppe. The other, Antonino, had fallen six months before, Pasgol in front of the jewelry of the family in the centre of Palermo.

Mineo is contained in all the relevant chapters of the history of the sicilian mafia. He was also arrested after the declaration of the first repented, Leonardo Vitale, at the beginning of the seventies. After two other repentant added data to the accusations that they allowed open to Falcone, the famous maxi process and was sentenced to 7 years in prison. Years later, in 2006, he was arrested again and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

The operation, dubbed the Cupola 2.0 and carried out by the carabinieri, raises some doubts in other law-enforcement bodies and experts in the field. According to sources from the police of Palermo, could be “a little exaggerated” to consider Settimio, a type of 80 years old, boss of the mandamento of Pagliarelli (the different districts in which it is organized Cosa Nostra) and with a health doubtful, as the chosen one to revive an organisation in a state of fragility. In fact, the sicilian mafia has been tremendously overshadowed in recent years by the tremendous growth of the ‘Ndrangheta, its counterpart calabrian.

The journalist sicilian Attilio Bolzoni, one of the leading experts in the Cosa Nostra of the world, believes that you have to take it with caution. “The mafia in Italy today is another thing. This is an important operation because of the fact there is. These men gathered and they caught him while they chose to Mineo as a representative. But there were not all the families of Palermo... And I think that this is not a mafia boss”.

In any case, the operation, conducted by a group of high judges, has allowed us to unravel some details of the nature of the current business. The two major sources of revenue for the organization, says the research, are now the Internet gambling and drug trafficking. But the infiltration in the tissue political remains high, as revealed by the latest research. In fact, in the last election campaign was followed in detail in this research.