Detectives hunting the Sicilian mafia king Bernardo Provenzano, who has been on the run for 41 years, on Tuesday arrested 46 people in an effort to break up the network that has supported him.
More than 1 000 police were involved in scores of dawn raids across Sicily.
The suspects, charged with crimes including murder, extortion and drug trafficking, ”formed the logistic network of Bernardo Provenzano, guaranteeing his communication with the entire mafia organisation”, a statement from the Palermo anti-mafia police said.
Reports said tapped phone calls and intercepted messages showed that Provenzano’s supporters constantly foiled investigations by passing on vital information, such as where police had placed listening devices and hidden cameras.
For years Provenzano has sent instructions in ”piccini”, cryptic handwritten notes delivered by middlemen to his loyal foot soldiers.
Reports in Italian newspapers this month said investigators had intercepted calls between suspected mobsters discussing plans to assassinate Pietro Grasso, the chief prosecutor in Palermo, Luca Tescaroli, the assistant prosecutor in Rome, and an insider who had been collaborating with police in their efforts to capture Provenzano.
Early this month regional mafia bosses from Agrigento, Catania and Palermo held a summit to plot the murders of the three men.
The plan involved kidnapping and then killing Tescaroli and the collaborator. Grasso was to be blown up in what would have been the first big mafia assassination since the 1992 murders of the prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. – Guardian Unlimited Â