Twenty-seven people were
arrested in Palermo on Monday following an anti-mafia
investigation in which investigators said they were able to
penetrate the local mafia's omertà, or code of silence, to
gather testimony from victims of alleged extortion and bribery.
Only six of those arrested were newly jailed, as 21 were
already in prison.
One of those arrested in the operation was a local city
councillor, Giuseppe Faraone, 69.
He stands accused of allegedly using mafia tactics to
attempt to extort money from a businessman on behalf of a mafia
boss.
Faraone was on the commission for public and urban works,
and took up politics in 2000 after retirement from the
Agricultural Development Agency in Palermo.
Regarding the arrest of Faraone, Palermo prosecutor
Francesco Lo Voi said "episodes like this feed anti-political
sentiment and throw discredit onto public institutions."
Investigators said several local businessmen provided
testimony in the investigations, detailing stories of at least
13 instances of extortion.
Lo Voi said with this particular investigation, "the wall
of omertà has fallen".
Omertà is a traditional honor code of silence that has long
kept victims of mafia extortion from coming forward to
authorities about mafia crimes.
The businessmen who came forward in this investigation were
aided by a group called Addiopizzo, which roughly translates to
"goodbye protection money", whose members worked with victims of
extortion to encourage them to report the alleged extortions to
police investigators.
"Now is the time to destroy the wall of omertà and to
consolidate and spread the system of collective citations by
businesspeople. Only like this, with a decisive and dedicated
popular effort, will we be able to defeat the practice of
protection money," the group said.
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