Climbed on a rocky wall like a daring fly climber, from the slopes to the peaks. He climbed the heart of the Aspromonte and that of the 'Ndrangheta. The beating heart of one of the largest criminal organizations in the world. San Luca, the extreme point of Calabria, is not a country like the others. Here, as the Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate writes, «the 'Ndrangheta is breathed, the' Ndrangheta is inherited. The 'Ndrangheta families ensure control of the territory through generational continuity ”. A village of three thousand souls, from an altitude of 36 meters above sea level up to an altitude of 1,955. From here they control the neighboring territory like no other, they sight the horizon, from Germany to Sardinia. In these steep houses on the land of Calabria there are all the districts and clans of the Ionian side: the 'Ndrina Nirta, the' Ndrina Pelle, the 'Ndrina Strangio, the' Ndrina Romeo and the 'Ndrina Giorgi.

From eggs to slaughter

It was February 10, 1991 when a group of young people linked to the Strangio and Nirta clans, called "Versu", threw eggs at a "recreational" club run by Domenico Pelle, one of the "Gambazza" men, in the middle of the carnival. In the collision of the eggs on the walls, the sketches reach the car of one of the Vottari. It is the beginning of the end. Those eggs first become the feud and then the massacre of San Luca. The escalation is an endless crescendo. They kill each other in clusters, until the showdown in a foreign land. The massacre takes place in Duisburg. It is mid-August 2007. At the hands of the Strangio clan, 6 people are killed in front of an Italian restaurant in Duisburg, on German soil. It is the advanced point of the criminal war between the bloodiest clans in the history of 'Ndrangheta.

From San Luca to Sardinia

From San Luca to the shores of Lake Constance, in the German Land of Baden Wuerttemberg, from Brazil to Sardinia, the step is short. The criminal history of 'Ndrangheta is boundless, the only passport that is recognized is that of shady deals, to be consumed with blood and the most bloody unscrupulousness. To think that the Isola dei Nuraghi, mistakenly considered impenetrable and repellent to organized crime, could become the protagonist of this universe, long ago, would have been a prediction to be branded as cheap alarmism.

The facts, another story

The facts, however, tell a whole other story. First the landing in Nuchis, on the slopes of Tempio, then, the invasion of the Massama penitentiary in the Oristano countryside, passing through the Badu 'e Carros prison in Nuoro, until the next mass transfer of 92 mafia bosses to the Cagliari prison by Uta. In a few years Sardinia, with this perverse criminal transhumance, has damned fully entered the most nefarious circuit of organized crime. Inside the Sardinian penitentiary structures, radio prison and the reports of the investigators tell, the first contacts begin between the local underworld and the leading exponents of the large criminal organizations, from the mafia to the Camorra, from the Sacra Corona united to the 'Ndrangheta.

Fire with mistral

The vortex extends like a fire pushed by the mistral in a land burnt by the economic crisis and by the boundless search for easy income. What for some was unmotivated alarmism today is already a dramatic reality, carved in procedural documents, with investigations of international level, with Sardinia dramatically protagonist. It is May 5 of last year when one of the most impressive operations of the Anti-Mafia Investigation Department is triggered. International operation. To be intercepted two exponents of the 'Ndrangheta positioned between Sassari and Alghero, one in prison and the other under house arrest.

The encrypted phone

Leading exponents, the investigators write in the notes of the investigation. They speak freely, from Capo Caccia to the shores of the German lake of Constance, as if they were CIA agents, using the most sophisticated equipment, from the Sky encryption system to the Bq telephone with Encrochated protocol. It is from those conversations, deemed interception-proof, that a maxi international operation between Sardinia, the Italian territory, Germany and Spain is triggered. The code name for the foray into the heart of San Luca's power is "Platinum-Dia".

Real war

The deployment on the field is warlike. Two hundred women and men of the Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate, one hundred units of the State Police, the Carabinieri and the Guardia di Finanza with the support of dog units, helicopters and soldiers of the Caserta Engineers Regiment, as many as 500 police officers Criminal from Baden-Wuttemberg, from the Economic and Financial Police of Ulm and from the SEK, from the Romanian and Spanish police. Under attack by the police, it is one of the crucial associations of the Duisburg massacre.

Sardinia "protagonist"

The "family-clan" of San Luca controls an articulated system of international drug trafficking with Sardinia dramatically involved in an increasingly worrying vortex. 33 leading figures end up in jail, with 65 suspects. Between Cagliari and Alghero seven Sardinian subjects reach their homeland prisons, all basists of the 'Ndrangheta infiltration of the island. A large-scale raid which, however, had not yet revealed the heart of the criminal strategy. Putting together the dots of the investigation, connecting them to each other, a picture emerges that to define disturbing is an understatement. To reveal the content of that plan that emerged from the wiretapping, arrests and seizures of evidence and documents, are the reports of the Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate. This time no more risks of infiltration and that's it. In the cards we read a "hands" strategy of the 'Ndrangheta on Sardinia. We quote verbatim, to articulate facts and not alarmist assumptions. The operation put in black and white in the confidential documents of the investigation revealed not only the illicit and criminal trafficking, but also the strategic plans for Sardinia of one of the most powerful associations of 'Ndrangheta headed by the family of San Luca, the the same to which the two prominent characters located between Sassari and Alghero belong, authors of the key interceptions of the criminal show down.

Center of gravity 'Ndrangheta

On the plans of the San Luca crime family, the investigators leave no margins: " he had laid the foundations to open a new shop in Sardinia ... clearly revealing the intention to import large quantities of drugs into Sardinia on a monthly basis (about 20 kg of cocaine), effectively shifting the center of gravity of the drug dealing activities managed by the same, from Sicily to Sardinia, where a new and profitable Sardinian "dealing center" could be created » . Words written with the mark of the Anti-Mafia Investigation Department. In practice, one of the largest drug trafficking organizations in the world had planned to " shift the center of gravity from Sicily to Sardinia ". It does not take long to understand the weight of these statements, to connect the threads of what is happening in a deafening silence on the island that was thought to be immune from organized crime. It is always the last dossier of the Investigation Department to trace the methods and objectives of the criminal organization: "Sardinia represented for the 'Ndrangheta a market in which to enter, with its own organization and logistic structure, for the sale of drugs ... where expand its illicit businesses, both by identifying new sales channels (stable buyers and / or stable subjects on which to rely) and by starting to import large quantities, thus creating a new "network" of business "through Cagliari subjects".

Cagliari in the viewfinder

The Investigative Directorate adds: «In consideration of its commercial and entrepreneurial importance, the Sardinian capital is more exposed to the influence of extra-regional mafia associations». In Uta, meanwhile, in the prison on the slopes of Monte Arcosu, as if nothing had happened, the nefarious arrival of 92 other Mafia leaders is being prepared. In the land of the Nuraghi, a cursed silence reigns, almost a welcome to the lords of San Luca on the Cayenna Island of the State.

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