[ad_1]
After agreeing to give detailed testimony, Emanuele was moved into police protection. There, he quickly began to provide prosecutors with what they had been desperate for: the inside track on the Mancuso family, the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta, and their most violent secrets. Italian anti-mafia police had been trying to bring the Mancusos to justice, with only sporadic success, for decades. But due to omertà, little evidence had e scaped from inside the family. Emanuele, however, had information that no other witness could provide: details, dates, and people, set down with painstaking accuracy. He could name names, such as in the case of a drugs trafficker who killed a woman and allegedly fed her body to pigs.
In the early hours of 19 December 2019, Italian anti-mafia police launched one of the biggest operations in its history. Around 3,000 officers from the elite cacciatori (literally, “the hunters”) participated in raids across Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Bulgaria. Suspects were plucked from bunkers and hidden trap doors, from manhole covers and behind sliding staircases. One suspect was allegedly caught after officers followed a stray plume of cigarette smoke coming from an abandoned house in a half-deserted village. In total, detectives arrested around 330 people, and seized an estimated £13.5 million in cash and property. Nicola Gratteri, the esteemed anti-mafia prosecutor who led the investigation, claimed that the dawn raids had “completely dismembered the ranks of the Mancuso family.” The operation had been informed, in part, by Emanuele’s testimony.
When the trial began in January 2021, its sheer scale attracted worldwide coverage. Every story was invariably accompanied by mention of Emanuele Mancuso, the mafia princeling who had committed the unthinkable and crossed the criminal divide. Though the ’Ndrangheta had been on trial before, there had never been anything like this. A total of 355 defendants, 900 prosecution witnesses and a small army of lawyers and journalists all passed through “The Bunker”, a heavily fortified converted call centre on the outskirts of Lamezia Terme, a small city around half an hour’s drive from Catanzaro prison. Spread over 3,300 square metres, upon completion it became the largest courtroom in the western world. When in session, soldiers with machine guns patrolled its perimeter alongside a phalanx of armoured vehicles. Inside, the charges ranged from murder and extortion to drug trafficking, loan sharking and the abuse of public office. Defendants included notorious Mancuso clan members as well as their white-collar enablers, including lawyers, bankers and corrupt politicians. Among them, a wave of Emanuele Mancuso’s old acquaintances and relatives, damned by his explosive testimony.
To date, over 70 convictions have already been handed down, though the trial still has at least a year to run. Many of the highest-profile cases are still waiting to be heard, including that of Emanuele’s uncle, Luigi, the clan’s notorious de facto boss. Excitable comparisons have been made with the famous 1986 “maxi-trial”, which decimated an entire generation of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and led to the murders of legendary anti-mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in July 1992.
More than four and a half years after writing that letter in 2018, Emanuele lives a peripatetic life under state protection, moving between a series of anonymous addresses across Italy. Time has taken on a strange, uneven rhythm. Here one day, perhaps gone the next, sometimes at a moment’s notice. Strict limits are placed on where he can go and who he can see. Armed guards are never more than a couple of minutes away. His ongoing testimony in the trial is given via video link from a secure location, though he occasionally meets Calabria’s anti-mafia prosecution team in person. I spoke to him exclusively by Skype; Emanuele looked tired, with dark rings of exhaustion under his eyes. He chain-smoked as we talked, having spent the morning tidying his apartment in preparation for one of the weekly visits from Lucia, who is now four.
[ad_2]
Source link