Italian police made several arrests
Tuesday in a probe into hard-core 'ultra' fans of Atalanta who
allegedly distributed drugs ahead of cocaine-fuelled violence at
the Bergamo stadium.
Police said "numerous individuals" were being targeted for
suspected drug trafficking and distribution, extortion, robbery
and resisting arrest.
In all, 26 people are under investigation.
Eleven are being held in prison, seven are under house
arrest, three have been ordered to stay in one place and five
have been ordered to report to police regularly.
"Many" of those probed ar Atalanta fans, police said.
The investigation, which began in November 2015, has led
police to get "serious evidence" against a group of Italians as
well as an Albanian citizen and a Serb, mostly Atalanta ultras,
"dedicated to shifting huge quantities of drugs, among the home
fans," police said.
Among those probed are a 63-year-old and a 73-year-old, and
the son of Brescia prosecutor Tommaso Buonanno, Francesco,
police said.
The probe "has highlighted a systematic activity of pushing
on the part of some ultras to other supporters," the head of the
Italian police's Central Operational Service (SCO), Alessandro
Giuliano, told reporters Tuesday.
The probe, lasting four to five months, Giuliano said,
enabled police to document pushing in a bar adjacent to the
stadium thanks to video-surveillance systems".
Cocaine was also sold and consumed in toilets inside the
stadium, Giuliano said.
Local police said "fans loaded up on cocaine in the toilets
and then went out onto the stands to fight, with their hoods
closed" to avoid identification.
The Bergamo probe "is the confirmation of the solidity of our
investigation to get at the murky links between fan groups and
criminal gangs," the chair of the Mafia and Sport Committee of
the parliamentary anti-mafia commission, Marco Di Lello of the
ruling centre-left Democratic Party (PD), also told ANSA on
Tuesday.
"We will go ahead with our investigations, convinced there is
more to discover," he said.
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