Word: palermo
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...moonless night in the Sicilian city of Palermo, a night filled with the sirocco, a torrid, noisy wind that blows in across the Mediterranean from the Sahara, moaning through the city's narrow streets and driving its inhabitants indoors. Few if any residents noticed as squads of armored cars raced through the streets and gun-toting officers cordoned off the city into three sections. Nor, except for the street cleaners, who were just beginning their rounds, did anyone see the law men begin rousing out of their beds and hustling off to jail the men whose names appeared...
...arrest of 366 Mafia members, 140 of whom were already in jail, police rounded up 53. By the time the sun rose, the jails that had been set aside for the operation were overflowing. Before the morning was well advanced, a chartered Alitalia DC-9 had left Palermo, carrying the stunned Mafiosi to prisons in northern Italy, not to protect them but to keep them from warning their confederates that Italy had finally declared full-scale war on the "honored association...
...raid, directed by Palermo Investigating Magistrate Giovanni Falcone, had repercussions in the U.S. as well. Two days after the Palermo crackdown, U.S. authorities ordered the arrests of 28 Americans and Italians in New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Michigan and Wisconsin and began the procedure necessary to extradite them to Italy...
Many Mafia leaders are clearly worried. Late last week Leonardo Rimi, a mid-level Sicilian mobster and ally of Buscetta's, was gunned down as he hid in a farmhouse 30 miles from Palermo. Some Italian law enforcement officials interpreted the murder as a warning to Buscetta and to anyone else who might be tempted to talk. There was anxious speculation that the upheaval caused by Buscetta's revelations could produce a new round of all-out bloodletting...
...Caravaggio Conspiracy is Watson's enthralling account of that search, which led him perilously deep into the byways of the international art underworld. Among the astonishing facts he uncovered is that most art thefts are pulled off with as little difficulty as the Caravaggio caper in Palermo. In Italy alone, 44,000 works of art disappear each year. Indeed, during Watson's dogged investigation, enough masterpieces were purloined from churches, galleries and private homes to furnish a museum. The odds on retrieving the Caravaggio were minuscule. In Italy, only 10% of recorded stolen art is ever recovered...