'The Godmother': Italian police arrest female mafia boss Maria Licciardi
A reputed top Naples crime syndicate boss was arrested as she was about to board a flight to Spain, Italian authorities said.
The interior minister, Luciana Lamorgese, praised the arrest
of Maria Licciardi, 70, by Carabinieri officers on the orders of Naples
prosecutors.
Police from the paramilitary Carabinieri’s special
operations unit, which carried out the arrest, were not immediately available
for details. But the Carabinieri press office posted a dispatch by the Italian
news agency ANSA saying that Licciardi was arrested at Ciampino airport, Rome,
as she checked in luggage for a flight to Spain.
Investigators have alleged that Licciardi ran extortion
rackets as head of the Licciardi Camorra crime syndicate clan.
“She didn’t bat an eyelash when the officers blocked her and
served the warrant signed by the Naples prosecutors’ office,” ANSA said.
When first arrested in 2001 after she was stopped as she
drove a car near Naples, Licciardi had figured among Italy’s top 30 wanted
fugitives. She was released from prison in 2009 after serving time for
mafia-connected crimes.
Nicknamed by mobsters “a piccirella” (the little one) for
her petite build, Licciardi was one of the victors in a long-running blood feud
between alliances of clans that left Naples littered nearly daily with bodies
earlier this century, prosecutors say.
Naples prosecutors, in a 2009 interview with the Associated
Press, described Licciardi as a true “madrina” (godmother) in the Camorra
syndicate. Her brother was a clan boss and she made decisions for the crime
family along with other clan bosses, prosecutors said.
The extortion of local business owners, drug trafficking and
the infiltration of public works contracts are traditional sources of illicit
revenue for the Naples-based Camorra, one of Italy’s major crime syndicates.
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