A Roman lawyer was arrested
Friday for helping ensure a 'pax mafiosa' between clans and
gangs in the Roman coastal town of Ostia.
The lawyer, Lucia Gargano, is accused of working with clan
boss Salvatore Casamonica and a Lazio ultra leader killed in
Rome last year, Fabrizio Piscitelli aka Diabolik, to keep the
peace with other clans including the Spadas.
The lawyer has been placed under house arrest.
Another warrant has also been served on Salvatore Casamonica,
who is already serving time for mafia offences.
Both Casamonica and Gargano have been placed under a new
investigation for eternal complicity in mafia association,
judicial sources said.
The Casamonicas and the Spadas are the main criminal groups
in Ostia.
The two clans, who are of Rom and Traveller origin, are also
one of the biggest mafia organisations in Rome.
Rome's Casamonica crime clan suffered another big blow last
may when 22 people allegedly belonging to it were arrested in an
operation by Carabinieri police.
The operation aimed to break up an alleged criminal
association to deal drugs in Rome's Via del Quadraro and Porta
Furba districts that was estimated to have generated over
100,000 euros a month.
"It is another blow to the clan. The institutions are
present," said Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi.
The Casamonicas, who have Roma and Traveller origins, have
long been considered the most powerful mafia-style group in
Rome.
The clan is thought to have around 1,000 members and is
involved in illegal activities ranging from loan sharking to
drug trafficking, according to investigators.
The clan has accumulation millions of euros that it has
invested in villas, luxury cars and race horses, among other
assets.
There was a scandal in 2015 when one clan boss had
a Godfather-like funeral complete with music from the iconic
film and rose petals dropped onto a horse-drawn hearse from a
helicopter.
In July 2018 the gang suffered a major blow when 37
people were arrested in an operation targeting it.
The clan was bust wide open, police said, thanks to the
State's evidence of the sister-in-law of a boss, the partner of
Massimiliano Casamonica, brother of clan chieftain Giuseppe
Casamonica.
Never accepted by the clan, she is now under police
protection and her identity is being protected too,
investigators said.
The Spadas garnered headlines two years ago when a member
headbutted and broke the nose of a RAI TV reporter probing their
alleged support for the far-right CasaPound group in Ostia
elections.
Piscitelli alias Diabolik, the Lazio ultra leader with
criminal convictions for drug pushing, was killed
execution-style last August.
The arrival of his coffin was greeted with several Fascist
'Roman' salutes at his funeral.
Diabolik was killed in what appears to have been a
professional hit with a shot to the back of his neck.
Investigators are not ruling out any hypotheses but they are
primarily focused on looking into the possibility that an
organized-crime clan was behind the murder and not necessarily
an Italian one.
The 53-year-old had a criminal record for drugs trafficking
and the finance police seized two million euros in assets from
him in 2016.
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