Word: provenzano
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...Sicily, a bust immediately hailed as a major victory for the Italian state in its ongoing battle against organized crime. Lo Piccolo, 65, was considered the unrivaled leader of the world's best-known crime syndicate, Cosa Nostra (Our Thing), after the April 2006 capture of legendary capo Bernardo Provenzano. He had been a fugitive since 1983. Salvatore Lo Piccolo was the only one able to take over the mantle from Provenzano, Italy's top Mafia prosecutor Piero Grasso told reporters...
...Some 40 members of the same special "Catturando" police unit that nabbed Provenzano in the hills of Corleone found the Lo Piccolos, and several other top Mafia figures, in a pair of well-furnished houses near the town of Cinisi, just west of Palermo. The senior Lo Piccolo, sporting a leather jacket and a mane of white hair and beard, shared only a vague resemblance with the most recent composite sketch. On the premises, police found weapons, cash, fake identification and the tiny handwritten notes that Provenzano also utilized for communicating among mob bosses. Italian media report that the younger...
...Indeed, the Mafia is still very much a family affair. Loyalty is ensured by blood rites and membership passed down through the generations of certain clans. The elder Lo Piccolo may have spelled his own doom by being in close proximity to his son for a summit on Monday. Provenzano, who evaded capture for 43 years, including a decade as Italy's most wanted man, famously lived in isolation, often in rugged conditions to better duck the authorities...
...older Lo Piccolo, a native of the Tommaso Natale neighborhood of western Palermo, had been Provenzano's top lieutenant in the capital while grooming his son for succession. Since his ascension in the wake of Provenzano's capture, police say Lo Piccolo was also focused on expanding ties with the American mob. He had favored allowing a historic Mafia family to return to the Sicilian capital after more than two decades of forced exile in the United States, following an internal mob war in the 1980s. Dubbed "gli scappati" (the fled ones), the Inzerillo family had been on the verge...
...biblical twist will add to the intrigue of the infamous crime network, which over the past century has occasionally crossed paths with the Roman Catholic church. But Cosa Nostra's sins share nothing with those of the Da Vinci Code or Francis Ford Coppola films - they are real. Provenzano is believed to have had a hand in the slayings of countless rival gang members, as well as of innocent bystanders and crusading magistrates. It's no longer a secret that some mobsters are deeply religious. The mystery remains that they can reconcile what they read in the holy scripture with...