Virus lockdown helps Italian police arrest ‘leading’ mobster

ROME: A top ‘Ndrangheta clan member was arrested in Italy after police, helped by the anti-coronavirus lockdown, spotted the fugitive smoking inside a seemingly deserted safe house, authorities said on Friday.

The suspect, described by police as a “leading figure of the ‘Ndrangheta of Locri” in southern Calabria, had been on the run since August, when a judge issued a warrant for the 42-year-old’s arrest.

Thanks to the empty streets and stay-at-home orders imposed throughout the country due to the coronavirus risk, the police, who had been tracking him for days, found him at a house in the town of Bruzzano Zeffirio, at the tip of Italy’s boot, late on Thursday.

“The faint glow of a cigarette — caught through the crack of a shutter — was enough to give the carabinieri the certainty that in that house was the wanted man,” the police of the province of Reggio Calabria, who staged the raid, said in a statement.

About a dozen people linked to the Locri clan were arrested in August on suspicion of various crimes, including mafia-type association, extortion, illegal competition, fraudulent transfer of assets, and possession of and carrying weapons in public.

The ‘Ndrangheta, a loose confederation of about 100 organised groups centred in the Calabria region, is considered the country’s most powerful and most organised crime syndicate.