Hundreds face sentencing in historic Italian mafia trial
FILE PHOTO: A view taken on 15 December 2020 in Lamezia Terme, Calabria, shows Italy's Minister of Justice Alfonso Bonafede (5th R) touring with officials, police, and reporters a new bunker room built for the upcoming 'Rinascita-Scott' maxi-trial in which more than 350 alleged members of Calabria's 'Ndrangheta mafia group and their associates go on trial. (Photo by Gianluca CHININEA / AFP)
Hundreds of alleged mobsters will be sentenced Monday by an Italian court, the culmination of a historic, nearly three-year trial against Calabria's notorious 'Ndrangheta mafia.
Prosecutors are asking for guilty verdicts against 322 accused mafia members and their white-collar collaborators in what could mark the most significant blow to date against one of the world's most powerful organized crime syndicates, which enjoys a near-monopoly on the European cocaine trade.
The sentencing will cap Italy's largest mafia trial in decades, a "maxi-trial" in which vast numbers of defendants accused of being part of the same mafia criminal conspiracy face justice.
The court of Vibo Valentia — a province in the poor southern region of Calabria that is the birthplace of the 'Ndrangheta — has heard thousands of hours of testimony since the trial began in January 2021, including from more than 50 former mafia operatives turned state's witnesses.
They and others have detailed countless examples of the 'Ndrangheta's brutality and its stranglehold over the local population, whether carrying out violent ambushes, shaking down business owners, rigging public tenders, stockpiling weapons, collecting votes, or passing kickbacks to the powerful.
The accused are members or affiliates of the top 'Ndrangheta "clan" in Vibo Valentia — one of the region's many economically depressed rural areas where the mafia has suffocated the local economy, infiltrated public institutions, and terrorized its people for decades.
The undisputed boss of the territory, Luigi "The Supreme" Mancuso, 69, was cut from the defendants list last year to be tried separately.
The heavily secured courtroom bunker in the city of Lamezia Terme where the trial has taken place can accommodate hundreds of lawyers and is outfitted with more than 20 television screens to connect it with incarcerated defendants by video link.
With nicknames straight out of Hollywood like "The Wolf", "Fatty", "Sweetie" and "Lamb Thigh", the 'Ndrangheta of Vibo Valentia was entrenched in the local economy, feared by business owners and farmers, and protected by white-collar professionals and politicians.