$Unique_ID{COW01928} $Pretitle{382} $Title{Italy Chapter 5D. Organized Crime} $Subtitle{} $Author{Peter J. Kassander} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{mafia br terrorist groups police political italian italy neofascist terrorism} $Date{1985} $Log{} Country: Italy Book: Italy, A Country Study Author: Peter J. Kassander Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1985 Chapter 5D. Organized Crime According to police and senior magistrates, in 1984 organized crime in Italy, as embodied in the Mafia of Sicily and the camorra of Naples, represented a greater threat to the internal security of Italy than did political violence. Officials of the Sicilian regional government were forced to resign in early 1984 after the arrest of the deputy premier on charges of corruption and the disclosure that the premier was under investigation on similar charges. The involvement of these and other Italian government officials in corruption cases illustrated the power and extent of organized crime. The decisive factor in its spread was the drug trade, which operated primarily from the Rome area, where serious crime figures exceeded the national average. The Mafia was once defined as a "criminal organization with the aim of the illegal enrichment of its own members. Using force, it operates as a parasitic middleman between owners and workers, between producers and consumers, between citizens and the state". The precursors of the modern Mafia were the compagnie d'armi, small private armies that feudal landowners employed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to enforce their authority. In the absence of law courts, these armies dispensed primitive justice. By the time the term Mafia came into general use in the nineteenth century, the descendants of the compagnie d'armi had evolved into a secret, hierarchical organization, divided into specialized sectors that controlled Siciliy's cattle, pasturelands, slaughterhouses, fruit plantations, market gardens, and ports. The nucleus of the "honored association", as the Mafia members euphemistically referred to their organization, was the family, whose members were linked by blood or marriage. The Mafia often represented a stronger political machine than the provincial government of Sicily. To consolidate his dictatorship, Mussolini attempted to eradicate the Mafia in the mid-1920s. Using draconian police methods, such as torture and summary execution, the police succeeded in weakening the Mafia control but were unable to prevent its eventual resurgence. After World War II the Mafia regained its influence not only through the collection of "protection money" for guarding property, irrigation systems, and fishing fleets but also through greater involvement in urban economic affairs. The Mafia gained control of the wholesale market for vegetables, meat, and fish and engaged in cigarette smuggling as well as real estate speculation. By the mid-1970s the Mafia had assumed international, rather than regional, dimensions. Mafia-sponsored kidnappings throughout Italy extorted large ransoms from the families of the abducted. More serious, however, was Mafia involvement in the international narcotics market. Opium derivates were brought to Sicily, processed into heroin, and smuggled throughout Europe and to the United States. The expansion of the Sicilian banking system was also linked to Mafia involvement in narcotics. During the 1970s the number of Sicilian bank branches increased by 400 percent compared with an 80 percent increase in the rest of Italy. The Customs Police and the investigating magistrates probed the origin of Mafia accounts and strongly suspected that laundered money from the sale of narcotics was being invested in construction, tourism, and the economy in general. In an effort to eradicate the Mafia, the Italian government had appointed the deputy commander of the Carabinieri, General Dalla Chiesa, as prefect of Palermo, Sicily, with responsibility for the fight against the Mafia. After the assassination of the general in September 1982, over 100 suspected Mafia members were arrested and charged with suspected involvement in the Dalla Chiesa assassination. However, in 1985, the case had not yet been argued in the Italian courts. In addition, the parliament passed specific, anti-Mafia legislation. The new law specified that association with the Mafia was a criminal offense. The law widened the powers of the police and the courts to define criminal association and empowered magistrates to examine witnesses privately-to break the Mafia code of omerta, or (silence)-and to order Mafia suspects to live under police surveillance in remote areas. The law also gave the authorities power to break banking secrecy in investigating the accounts of Mafia suspects, their families, and associates, as well as those of suspected firms. It also allowed the supervision of public and private work projects, the tapping of suspects' telephones, and the confiscation of illegal profits. Association with the Mafia was punishable by three to six years of imprisonment, while the organization of Mafia activities was punishable by nine years of imprisonment, or up to 15 years for activities involving arms. "Illicit competition accompanied by violence and threats" would be punishable by two to six years of imprisonment. Activities of the camorra have been primarily confined to the region of Naples. Like the Mafia, the camorra developed as an auxiliary police under the rule of the Bourbons in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After the unification of Italy in the 1860s, the camorra become involved in smuggling and extortion, activities that were still carried out in the 1980s. Since the mid- 1970s the camorra has revived open gang warfare in the Naples region and was regarded as responsible for two-thirds of all violent deaths in Naples. In June 1982 more than 500 people were arrested on suspicion of camorra activities and were still being held in preventive detention in 1985. Political Violence Politically connected violence is rooted in Italian history. For manu centuries defiance of foreign overlords often took a violent character. Disorder and loss of life preceded and followed the unification of the country in 1961. In 1869, for example, 250 people were killed and 1,000 wounded during protests in southern Italy over a new grain tax imposed by the Piedmontese rulers of the new country. Several times the new government was required to undertake military operations to quell dissident disturbances in the south. A number of casualties also resulted from political disturbances in the late 1890s. During the early 1920s street clashes between political factions were commonplace. Mussolini's rise to power was at least partially aided by the willingness of his supporters to use violence. From the end of World War II until the late 1960s Italy was preoccupied with recovery from the war; a booming were able to promise of higher standards of living, and authorities were able to handle the challenges to domestic order instigated by political extremists. By the late 1960s, however, domestic order was challenged on several fronts. In 1968 and 1969 students formed anarchist and radical-leftist terrorist organizations that fomented disorder at several universities and openly clashed on the streets with neofascist and far-right groups. Amid declining economic conditions and a national political stalemate, labor unions were engaged in strikes and disorders in the summer and fall of 1969, as were similar groups in West Germany and France. Some of the unionists formed anarchist and radical-leftist groups similar to those of the students, and these labor extremist groups also engaged the neofascists in street battles. Since December 1969, politically motivated bombings, murders, and kidnappings have become a recurring feature of Italian life. Observers have estimated that over 14,000 terrorist acts were committed between 1968 and 1982 by well-organized terrorist groups and by occasional groupings of individuals in the name of ideologies or in the pursuit of specific goals. These groups have been classified into a number of categories: communist, neofascist, anarchist, separatist, counterseparatist, nationalist, ecological, feminist, internationalist, and transnational. The often ambiguous ideological line between these groups, which in some cases have professed multiple ideologies, has induced most observers to distinguish simply between terrorism of the left and terrorism of the right. Aggregate statistics of terrorist activity reflect not only intensity but also trends of escalation and de-escalation. Fewer than 150 incidents were recorded in 1968, several hundred incidents occurred each year from 1969 to 1975, over 1,000 in 1976, and over 2,000 per year during the 1977079 period. A constant decline in terrorism since 1979 has been the result of increased apprehension and penetration of terrorist groups by the police. In 1982 there were 628 criminal acts attributed to terrorist groups. All terrorist groups of the ideological left have shared the same goal-the "overthrow of the bourgeois, capitalist, imperialist state and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat". This was to be accomplished not only through the dissemination of Marxist-Leninist propaganda but also through attacks on the property of industrialists, as well as kidnapping and assassination. The BR have been the best known of the left-wing terrorist groups. Established in the late 1960s, the BR were initially active in proselytizing Marxism-Leninism but quickly moved toward more violent activity. The original declared aim of the BR was to create a situation in which a fascist coup could be effected. The BR left that such a coup would lead the PCI to return to the "revolutionary" role that it had abandoned by working within the political system and participating in ruling coalitions. The BT felt that a PCI return to an ideological role would lead to an outbreak of civil war that would eventually bring the left to power. The PCI, however, has supported antiterrorist legislation and has also expelled party members involved in terrorist organizations. The BR carried out their firs terrorist act in 1970 with the bombing of a Milan electronics firm. In 1971-73 they kidnapped several company officials and subjected them to propaganda trials and brainwashing before releasing them. The BR escalated their "attack on the state" in 1974 with the abduction of a Genoese magistrate, Mario Sossi. The assassination in June 1976 of the state prosecutor, Francesco Coco, led to the first postponement of the trial against BR founder Renato Curcio, who had been captured earlier that year. The murder of the head of the Turin lawyers' association. Fulvio Croce, in April 1977 led to a second postponement, BR attacks against sectors of Italian society frequent in 1977 and were characterized by the shooting of victims in the legs or kneecaps. Targets were selected specifically to intimidate the establishment-journalists and editors to prevent exposure in the media, teachers and university professors to ensure that the left-wing intellectual climate prevailed, and DC supporters to weaken political opposition to terrorism. The demonstrate their contempt for the democratic state, on March 16, 1978, the BR kidnapped the head of the DC and former prime minister, Aldo Moro, and killed his five bodyguards. Massive police and army operations over the next few weeks failed to uncover any trace of Moro, who according to a series of communiques from the BR underwent a "trial by people's court" and was "condemned to death". The kidnappers eventually demanded the release of all government-held BR prisoners in return for Moro's freedom, but the government refused to enter into negotiations with the BR, a decision supported by all major political parties and trade union federations, including the Communist-affiliated General Confederations and Socialists were apparently prepared for concessions, but Moro's bullet-riddled body was found on May 9, 1978, in the center of Rome. In the wake of the Moro killing, as well as other BR murders, 63 members of the BR were eventually arrested and put on trial. At the conclusion of the trial in early 1983, life sentences were imposed on 32 of the defendants. Lesser sentences were meted out to those defendants who had cooperated with the police in the investigation of the BR. Among observers of BR activity, as well as among the captured terrorists themselves, the Moro kidnapping and murder were regarded as the "apex of the armed struggle against the state". BR activity since 1978 has been restricted by police activities and also by public revulsion at the increased violence. The December 1981 kidnapping of General Dozier, them deputy chief of staff for logistics and administration at NATO Allied Land Forces Southern Europe headquarters in Verona, was foiled when the State Police, acting on information provided by captured BR members, freed Dozier and arrested his captors. BR-claimed murders have continued into the mid-1980s. The victims have been mostly limited to police officers and prison guards. The effect of increased counterterrorist operations by Italian law enforcement officials has altered the nature of BR terrorism. The kidnapping of Dozier and the February 1984 assassination of United States diplomat Leamon R.Hunt indicated that the BR intended to demonstrate their strong anti-American and anti-NATO sentiment that had previously appeared only in their writings. This apparent commitment to anti-Americanism had the potential for inducing support from left-wing French and West German terrorist groups for activity in Italy. Increased external support for the BR could, however, cause the Italian left-wing terrorist movement to lose its "revolutionary autonomy" and play a secondary role to non-Italian ideological interests. The threat posed by neofascist right-wing terrorist organizations is second only to that by the left-wing groups. The neofascist groups have neither the clear-cut ideology and revolutionary fervor of the left nor an equal organizational sophistication. At the same time, many right-wing militants have apparently dedicated themselves to the commission of crimes as a form of adventurous living in no way related to revolutionary or ideological goals. Neofascist violence had been more indiscriminate than the carefully directed attacks of the left. The neofascist groups have displayed attitudes indicative of nationalism, anticommunism, anticapitalism, racial superiority, anticlericalism, rigid order, and romantic adventurism. Individuals active in right-wing terrorist organizations have generally shared a background in the neofascist Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano-MSI), the most conservative political party with representation in parliament, in the MSI's youth organization (Fronte della Gioventu-FdG), or in other neofascist organizations without ties to the MSI. Those who deserted the MSI or the FdG generally did so because of the disillusionment with the party's insufficient right-wing stance and its limited role within the political scene.Other right-wing terrorists come directly from the ranks of petty criminals. Typical of the right-wing terrorist groups is the Armed Revolutionary nuclei (Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari-NAR), a neofascist organization that authorities have held responsible for major bomb explosions and for the killing of its political opponents. Its actions included the bombing of the Capitol in Rome on April 20, 1979; a bomb attack on the Regina Coeli prison in Rome on May 14, 1979; and an explosion at the Bologna railroad station on August 2, 1980, when 85 persons were killed and 194 injured. The Bologna attack was carried out "in hour of Mario Tutti", a right- wing extremist serving a life sentence for the murder of a police officer and also charged with involvement in the bombing of a Rome- Madrid express train in 1974. Another neofascist group, New Order/Black Order (Ordine Nuovo/Ordine Nero) claimed responsibility for a bomb attack on the Milan-Naples express train on December 23, 1984. In that attack, 15 people were killed and 116 wounded. In 1985 terrorist organizations in Italy could be described as having failed to meet its objective of the radical overthrow of state institutions., Its propaganda and tactics proved to be ill- suited to bring about any sort of political change. Because of decreased popular support and increasingly effective counterterrorist legislation and activity by the police, terrorist organizations of all ideologies had suffered major setbacks through 1984, and terrorist actions had dwindled to low levels. Foreign-sponsored terrorism has been sporadic in Italy, but discussion of political violence would be incomplete without mention of the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. On May 13, 1981, while holding a public audience within Sf.Peter's Square in the Vatican, Pope John Paul II was seriously wounded by bullets fired at him by Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish national, who was apprehended immediately after the shooting. Subsequent investigation uncovered the apparent involvement of several other Turkish and Bulgarian nationals in the assassination plot. Efforts to establish the motivation for the plot were inconclusive, but some evidence suggested an apparent attempt by the Bulgarian secret police, presumably acting on behalf of the Committee for State Security (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti-KGB) to stifle the resurgence of the Roman Catholic Church in Eastern Europe. Although Agca was subsequently tried and convicted of attempted murder, Italian judicial efforts to investigate the conspiracy have, in late 1985, yet no reach any conclusive findings about the nature and scope of foreign involvement in the attempted assassination. * * * Information about current developments in the Italian armed forces is difficult to find in English. Most discussions about NATO forces contain only peripheral reference to Italy, but some commentary on readiness may be found in journal such as NATO's Sixteen Nations and Jane's Defence Weekly. Valuable discussions of Italian terrorism may be found in a recent report of the Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Terrorism and Security: The Italian Experience, and in a series of articles and monographs by Vittorfranco S.Pisano.Pisano's work is noteworthy for its unbiased discussion of the intricacies of the Italian terrorist situation. A less objective discussion of international terrorism may also be found in The Terror Network by Claire Sterling. (For further information and complete citations, see Bibliography.)