(ANSA) - Reggio Calabria, July 26 - A mafia bombing campaign
in the early 1990s diminished with the arrival of Silvio
Berlusconi's Forza Italia (FI) party in 1994, a prosecutor
investigating attacks on Carabinieri police in that period said
on Wednesday.
Reggio Calabria Giuseppe Lombardo said the the strategy of
bombings "stopped or lost power" as soon as the mafia syndicates
"found a more convenient structure to have relations with in the
new party of Forza Italia".
Lombardo was speaking about a probe that led to the arrest of
two alleged mobsters on Wednesday over attacks on the
Carabinieri police late in 1993 and early in 1994.
Two Carabinieri were killed in Reggio Calabria and two others
injured.
Investigators suspect that the Calabrian-based 'Ndrangheta
and Sicily's Cosa Nostra had a common strategy that was behind
bomb these attacks.
The arrested men, Giuseppe Graviano and Rocco Santo
Filippone, are suspected of being the bosses of the criminal
organizations that ordered them.
According to investigators, the 'Ndrangheta was also involved
in attacks on the State as part of period called the
"continental bombings" in Florence, Milan and Rome.
Mafia bombings slowed with FI-prosecutor (2)
Lombardo says mobs had relations with centre-right party