Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

MAFIA

Italian mafia recorded plotting to kill ‘troublesome’ journalist

The Sicilian mafia sought to have a journalist killed for his reporting on their activities, investigators said on Tuesday.

Published: 10 April 2018 19:01 CEST
Italian mafia recorded plotting to kill 'troublesome' journalist
Paolo Borrometi has been living under police protection for four years. Photo: Paolo Borrometi/Facebook

While investigating a different assassination attempt, police wiretaps caught members of the Cappello clan, based in Pachino in the deep south of Sicily, discussing plans to murder Paolo Borrometi, editor of anti-mafia investigative website LaSpia.it. 

The Cappello boss, Salvatore Giuliano, was first recorded telling his one of his henchmen that Borrometi should be killed in early January, according to the investigating judge's account. Six weeks later, the same henchman was heard to say that the journalist “doesn't have long left”. 

“We have to get that one,” Giuseppe Vizzini told one of his sons. “Bang, on the ground.”

READ ALSO: Nearly 200 journalists in Italy are under police protection

In the same conversation, in which he outlined plans for a group of mafiosi to unleash “hell” on Borrometi, Vizzini went on to remark that “you need a body” every so often “to calm everybody down”. 

Investigators believe the clan was about to organize a violent attack “to eliminate the troublesome journalist”, the judge wrote.

It's not the first time that the Cappello clan has attempted to intimidate Borrometi, who has been under police protection for the past four years. 

In February a judge ordered Guiliano and his son Gabriele to stand trial for repeatedly threatening the journalist, who has already been to court six times over threats related to his work. The first hearing is scheduled for November. 

Meanwhile Vizzini and two of his sons, Simone and Andrea, were arrested on Tuesday in connection with a separate car bombing that targeted a lawyer involved in seizing the assets of a bankrupt company run by Vizzini's wife. 

Borrometi has met previous threats with defiance. Last month he addressed his attackers on Facebook, telling them: “Against your threats, our smiles! … People's smiles will wipe you out for good.”

As the latest threats became public, several politicians, as well as media outlets and journalist unions, expressed their solidarity. 

“My support and a hug to Paolo Borrometi, victim once more of mafia threats,” said Justice Minister Andrea Orlando. “We all owe a lot to those who every day bravely report on the mafia.”

Nearly 200 journalists in Italy receive some form of police protection, including 10 who are escorted round the clock. 

In February, a reporter in Slovakia was killed along with his partner as he prepared to publish an investigation that alleged high-level ties between members of the Slovak government and the Italian mafia. 

Police subsequently arrested several Italian suspects named in his report but released all except one of them, who was arrested on separate drug charges.

READ ALSO: Five ways to fight the Italian mafia

CLIMATE

Sicily braces for rare Mediterranean cyclone as storms continue

Sicily's residents are bracing for the arrival of a cyclone later on Thursday, the second this week after a deadly storm hammered the Italian island, killing three people.

Published: 28 October 2021 16:35 CEST
Sicily braces for rare Mediterranean cyclone as storms continue
Cars and market stalls submerged in Catania, Sicily, after heavy rain hit the city and province on october 26th. Photo: STRINGER/ANSA/AFP

A rare tropical-style cyclone known as a “medicane” is set to reach Sicily’s eastern coast and the tip of mainland Calabria between Thursday evening and Friday morning, according to Italian public research institute ISPRA.

“Heavy rainfall and strong sea storms are expected on the coast, with waves of significant height over 4.5 metres (15 feet),” ISPRA said.

The Italian Department for Civil Protection placed eastern Sicily under a new amber alert for Thursday and the highest-level red lert for Friday in anticipation of the storm’s arrival, after almost a week of extreme weather in the area.

A total of three people have been reported killed in flooding on the island this week amid storms that left city streets and squares submerged.

On Tuesday, parts of eastern Sicily were ravaged by a cyclone following days of heavy rains that had sparked flooding and mudslides, killing three people.

Television images from Tuesday showed flooding in the emergency room of Catania’s Garibaldi-Nesima hospital, while rain was seen pouring from the roof inside offices at the city courtroom.

Thursday’s storm was set to hit the same area around Catania, Sicily’s second-largest city, even as residents were still mucking out their streets and homes.

Schools were closed in Syracuse and Catania, where the local government ordered public offices and courts closed through Friday.

The mayor of Catania on Tuesday shut down all businesses and urged residents to stay home.

Antonio Navarra, president of the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change, told Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper this week that Sicily was at the centre of extreme weather events, including heatwaves and cyclones.

“We’re trying to understand if, with climate change, these phenomena will become even more intense, if they will change their character as their frequency intensifies,” he said.

READ ALSO: Climate crisis: The Italian cities worst affected by flooding and heatwaves

Cars submerged in Catania, Sicily, after storms hit the city and province on October 26th. Photo: STRINGER/ANSA/AFP

Other forecasters have said the “medicane” is the latest evidence that the climate crisis is irreversibly tropicalising the Mediterranean, after the island’s south-eastern city of Syracuse this August recorded a temperature of 48.8C, the hottest ever seen in Europe.

“Sicily is tropicalising and the upcoming medicane is perhaps the first of this entity, but it certainly won’t be the last,” Christian Mulder, a professor of ecology and climate emergency at the University of Catania, told The Guardian on Wednesday.

“We are used to thinking that this type of hurricane and cyclone begins in the oceans and not in a closed basin like the Mediterranean. But this is not the case,” he said.

“This medicane is forming due to the torrid climate of north Africa and the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The Aegean Sea has a temperature of 3C higher than the average, while the Ionian Sea has a temperature of almost 2C higher than the average. The result is a pressure cooker.”

The storm is expected to leave the area between Saturday and Sunday.

SHOW COMMENTS