In Naples, Mafia guns down six African immigrants

Mafia strike under nose of paratroopers

By Guy Dinmore

Financial Times, October 14 2008

Even Italy’s crack Folgore paratroopers could not save 60-year-old Stanislao Cantelli from the Mafia.

Mr Cantelli was playing cards in a social club on the busy high street of Casal di Principe – a satellite town and stronghold of the Camorra gangs – when someone walked in and fired 18 bullets.

Paratroopers were 200 metres away. By the time the police arrived, the killer and all witnesses had fled. Shops were closing their shutters.

Police say Mr Cantelli, a retired cheese factory worker, paid the price for being the uncle of Luigi Diana, a Mafia “pentito” or turncoat whose information had led to the arrest of members of the Casalesi clan.

Two weeks earlier, suspected Casalesi hitmen gunned down six African immigrants in Castelvolturno, a derelict zone north of Naples trying to reinvent itself with a coastal golf course.

A turf war over narcotics or golf, or simply a cocaine-driven demonstration of power by the mob?

Police are not sure. Frightened immigrants held a violent protest in response, accusing the state of abandoning them and Italians of racism.

The government’s decision to deploy the army has been cautiously welcomed by Italians as a sign that the state is trying to impose an authority that has been absent for years. Critics say it is just for show.