Cops climb gates to nab mobsters

17/12/2008

Police in Sicily conducted a series of pre-dawn raids in Pallermo, Sicily in which in which 94 suspected mafiosi were arrested, it has been reported.

Scaling garden gates and bulldozing walls, more than 1,000 police launched an assault on suspected mafia members who are thought to have been planning to create a new command structure under a new godfather, according to the Independent.

The paper notes that the Cosa Nostra has been struggling to exert its influence since the high profile arrest of Bernardo Provenzano, with local police stating that the mobsters were trying to re-establish its powers through a "provincial commission".

"If that [Provenzano] operation... brought Cosa Nostra to its knees, this prevented it from getting up again," said Italy's anti-Mafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso.

In other recent developments, Nottingham crown court recently announced that it had jailed a man who broke into people's homes using a blow torch and often targeted homes with expensive cars.