In any case, residents of Palermo greeted the completion of the special operation over the past weekend with tears of joy and outbursts of delight, during which Salvatore Lo Piccolo and his son Sandro were detained – men who stood at the top of the Cosa Nostra criminal pyramid. The elder Lo Piccolo, who is considered the 'godfather' of the Sicilian mafia, had been hiding from justice for a quarter of a century.
Law enforcement officers themselves and Italian authorities are trying to prove that this pyramid, if not collapsing before their eyes, is at least cracking. To date, over 300 bosses of the Sicilian mafia are already in prisons across the country, arrested mainly in recent years. The previous head of the mafia clans, the legendary Bernardo Provenzano, who had been wanted for more than 40 years, was detained just a year and a half ago. In April of this year, he was sentenced to 12 life terms. According to intelligence services, it was his place that Salvatore Lo Piccolo took, but he was not allowed to fully enjoy all the power. According to media reports, recently the police have managed to persuade a number of mafia representatives to cooperate, which ultimately made it possible to decapitate one of the most disciplined criminal communities in the world.
True, outwardly, at the moment of detention, the main mafiosi looked quite caricaturish for the 21st century: black leather jackets, gold chains around their necks, shiny Rolexes, a modest cottage called a villa for some reason – in general, typical racketeers from early 1990s Russia who had risen up. On the other hand, while our freshly-minted mafiosi were swapping racketeering for raiding, and leather jackets for strict suits, the Lo Piccolo family remained faithful to their once-chosen profession. Racketeering remains one of the main sources of income for the Sicilian mafia to this day, and joining the 'Goodbye, Bribe' program, which involves a public refusal to pay for protection, requires civil and personal courage from local entrepreneurs.
Having taken charge of the mafia, 65-year-old Salvatore Lo Piccolo tried to turn back time and prove that all these 'clean hands' operations, which are thought up in Rome, have nothing to do with Sicilian reality. La Repubblica notes that together with his son, who had been wanted for eight years for a double murder, the new 'godfather' literally tried with fire and sword to destroy the illusions of local businessmen who, after Provenzano's arrest, felt their necks and wallets free from the mafia's ropes. Arson, terrorist acts, threats – all this, combined with an arsenal of weapons found in one of the houses belonging to the clan, proved that, as one Palermo official put it, 'their intentions were by no means peaceful.'
Together with the Lo Piccolo family, two other major mafiosi were detained near Palermo. The governor of Sicily, Salvatore Cuffaro, has already stated that this event, occurring on the day of remembrance of mafia victims, should become a 'death blow to Cosa Nostra.' The Prime Minister of Italy, Romano Prodi, as reported by Interfax, called the arrest of the 'godfathers' a 'success for the state and all honest citizens.' Notably, Prodi's supporters argue that it was with his election that the fight against the mafia entered an active phase. In the sense that under Silvio Berlusconi, only ordinary members of Cosa Nostra ended up behind bars, while during Prodi's premiership, prison cells are being filled with mafia leaders.