Italian police arrest 181 in bid to stop Mafia rebuilding in Sicily

The Italian police launched a series of raids targeting the mafia clans operating inside and around the Sicilian capital, Palermo.

More than 1,200 officers participated in the operation, which Karabinieri military force said was aimed at “dismantling” the mafia in the region.

These raids, the largest for several years, were a presentation by the Italian authorities to stop rebuilding the mafia, the ruling body known as the dome.

A number of mafia heads have been released from prison in recent months at the appeal. But investigators say that those who are still behind bars have used encrypted mobile phones to continue their activities.

They also found that Cosa Nostra Mafia of Sicily had updated the practices of their “founding fathers” and no longer needed to meet personally.

Police explained that one of the local leaders managed to stay in hiding and still controls the organized crime in his local area.

For more than 100 years, the notorious mafia held a fist on local cities and cities, extorting companies through protection funds and achieving large profits from drug smuggling.

In the early nineties of the last century, anti -mafia -anti -mivive prosecutors were killed while trying to return.

Then in 1993, the so -called presidents, Salvatore “Toto” Reina, was arrested in Palermo, and in 2023 Matteo Missina Dunaro was arrested during his visit to a local clinic.

Although many mobs are in prison, Carappineri said they had succeeded in smuggling small mobile phones in their cells in an attempt to continue their criminal activities.

Police said they had met the encrypted chats of mobs by installing listening devices in the homes and cars of the suspects. However, they are not believed to have cracked the encryption, so their ability to eavesdrop was limited.

According to La Repubblica, the police are still trying to search for chat members who are going through titles such as Robert De Niro and Spider Man.

The raids began on Tuesday before dawn, targeting the clans through Palermo, from Thomaso Natal in the north of the city to Porta Nova at the center.

The police said that their investigations covered a group of suspected crimes, from the Mafia and Drug Trafficking Association to the attempt to kill and armed crime.

Many presidents who were already released from prison after judgments are among those who were arrested.

Among them was Thomaso Le Prostity, who spent 12 years in prison before his release in 2023.

There was a cry in the past year when Lu Prostity appeared to celebrate his silver marriage in the Palermo Church, where the anti -Mufia Giovanni Valcon was buried.