They Refused to Cooperate with Prosecutors
“They’re on the front line. It has always been like this within the Secondigliano clan, within the sense that women (wives, sisters and mothers of the leaders) have all the time had an influential role in lots of decisions. Maria Licciardi, Gennaro’s sister, is representative of this. She took orders to and from her brother: she transmitted his orders and messages, even those of main importance. On multiple occasion, she transported his orders to kill. I don’t recall the small print, however I do know that for our clan, talking with Maria Licciardi was the same as speaking with Gennaro, the boss. I can add that the Secondigliano women took on all sorts of jobs on behalf of the alliance, they took messages to prisoners, distributed cash to members, and organized actions, particularly numbers running and extortion rackets. In other phrases, they constitute the spine of the group.”[8]
Lucia Licciardi, no relation to Maria, was the only journalist to get access to her inner circle. In an interview, she described her management fashion as follows: “She behaves just just like the manager of a multinational. She all the time looks for a solution that is much less probably to draw police consideration and that creates fewer splits inside the clan.” On Maria Licciardi, Choose Luigi Bobbio acknowledged that: “The moment a lady takes cost of the organisation, paradoxically, we witness a lowering of the emotional stage and a greater efficiency of the group’s activities.”[7]
Bribing pentiti
[edit]
Maria Licciardi sought to control the potential results of the testimonies of many pentiti in order to guard the clan. The Secondigliano Alliance was divided over this problem. As an example, Italian police discovered that just a few days after his escape from his protected location, pentito Constantino Saro met Licciardi with a view to ask for money in return for retracting statements on the clan’s actions. [8] Some wished to pay him, whereas others wished to pay him after which murder him and his family.
In January 1998, Maria Licciardi was stopped in a automotive along with her sister, Assunta, and her sister-in-regulation with round 300 million lire, which the prosecutors believe was her purported fee to him. [8] She refused to disclose as to what the cash was for. She light into obscurity instantly after attorneys secured her launch.
Downfall
[edit]
The reign of Maria Licciardi ran smoothly for many years until a disagreement arose over a consignment of pure, unrefined heroin. Subsequently imprisoned.[9] In the spring of 1999, a big consignment of heroin arrived from Istanbul, Turkey. Licciardi decreed it should not be offered, as it was too pure and robust for the typical person and would thus kill those who purchased it, harming the alliance’s massive buyer base of drug customers. This caused nice public outrage. Nevertheless, the Lo Russo clan, who had all the time chafed underneath her leadership, disagreed and packaged the shipment on the market on the street. Resulted in huge police crackdowns on the Camorra clans. Many Camorristi have been arrested. The sale of the packets of unrefined heroin resulted in the deaths of many drug addicts across Naples, eleven of whom died in April 1999 alone.
The Lo Russo clan finally cut up from the alliance, leading to disintegration and a bloody gang conflict, including using car bombs and bazooka attacks. She mobilised her footsoldiers for an all-out counterattack. [9] It was around this time that investigators turned conscious of Licciardi’s existence. The deadly gang wars resulted in practically a hundred and twenty deaths in Naples and the encircling region. [6] When four clan members have been murdered in her stronghold of Secondigliano, Licciardi was forced to retaliate. Clans started preventing over turf, and tried to destroy or take other clan’s business.
Fugitive
[edit]
Licciardi was added on the “30 most wanted Italians” list and went into hiding. [5] She went to war with the Giuliano clan of Forcella, which was headed by one other feminine Camorra boss Erminia Giuliano, who took management after the arrest of her brother, Luigi Giuliano. While on the lam, she continued as the undisputed boss of the Licciardi clan and ordered a number of murders of rival mobsters. Should you have any inquiries regarding in which in addition to tips on how to use Italnova Thailand, you are able to email us on the page. [10] Because of a classy community of safety set up by her clan, Licciardi was in a position to evade seize for 2 years and, regardless of having modified her refuge a number of times, by no means left the Masseria Cardone district.
When the senior prosecutor Luigi Bobbio began making profitable prosecutions against her clan, Licciardi felt that he was getting closer to discovering her whereabouts. Over 70 members of the Licciardi clan were arrested. On the contrary, he was put under police protection and continued his prosecutions towards the clan undeterred. [7] Additionally to cease any additional prosecution of her clan members. Served their prison sentences. In January 2001, she bombed Bobbio’s workplace constructing. The bombing was delivered as a warning to cease the investigation of her clan’s activities. They refused to cooperate with prosecutors. However, the bombing did not stop Bobbio from continuing his investigations.
The police made many fruitless efforts to catch Licciardi. In April 2000, the Carabinieri arrested 13 Camorra bosses who had been holding a summit around a desk in a rural farmhouse between the districts of Qualiano and Giugliano. Nevertheless, Licciardi was not amongst them. [3] The group was allegedly discussing how to speculate its funds in a community of furniture and kids’s clothing stores.
On 9 June 2001, several hundred closely armed officers, backed by helicopter spotters, launched an intensive search operation in and around Secondigliano. [3] Her repeated successes in evading seize by the police inspired native journalists to dub her “The Scarlet Pimpernel of Italy“. Acting on a tip-off, they stormed a dilapidated constructing that she had been identified to make use of as a cover-out. Licciardi was nowhere to be discovered, however police discovered that inside an attic guarded by surveillance cameras she had put in marble floors, a grand piano and an outsize Jacuzzi.
2001 arrest and imprisonment
[edit]
On 14 June 2001, Licciardi was arrested by the Naples police whereas traveling with a married couple in a automobile round Melito, near Naples. She did not resist arrest. [5] After her arrest, her brother Vincenzo Licciardi took over as the head of the clan. The man accused of aiding her was arrested as properly, whereas his spouse was released on account of her being the mother of a baby. Vincenzo was himself ultimately arrested on 7 February 2008, after having been included on the listing of most wanted fugitives in Italy since 2004.[4] Was in the end sentenced to prison. After her arrest, police noticed she looked similar to the favored mugshot of her that was launched years earlier.
2009 release
[edit]
Although in prison, she still commanded the clan. Prisons don’t signify a barrier for the Camorra, in response to Anna Maria Zaccaria, a sociologist at the College of Naples Federico II researching the function of ladies in the syndicate. [11] In 2009, Licciardi was launched from prison after almost eight years. [12]
2021 arrest
[edit]
On 26 June 2019, Licciardi managed to escape from an enormous anti-Camorra operation towards the Secondigliano Alliance, turning into a fugitive.[13]
On 12 July 2019, the Courtroom of Naples annulled the preventive detention order in opposition to Licciardi, sharing the legal questions raised by her lawyer, Dario Vannetiello. Licciardi was thought of a free girl, regardless of her identified position as the pinnacle of the Secondigliano Alliance, some of the powerful criminal organization in the Campania region.[14]
She was arrested again at Rome’s Ciampino airport by Carabinieri on the orders of Naples prosecutors, alleged to have been running extortion rackets as head of the Licciardi Camorra clan, on 7 August 2021 when attempting to travel to Spain.[15]
Notes
[edit]
↑ “Alleanza di Secondigliano patto di sangue e di famiglia: al vertice i boss Mallardo, Contini e Maria Licciardi ‘a piccerella”. Cronache della Campania. 26 June 2019.
1 2 Italian Mafia Sees Rise of Girl Energy, ABC Information, 20 June 2001
1 2 3 4 5 6 Godmother sends deadly message to her Mafia rivals, Each day Telegraph, 19 June 2001
1 2 Prime Camorra boss nabbed in main blow to Naples crime gang Archived 2008-11-02 at the Wayback Machine, Italy Magazine, 2 August 2008
1 2 3 Maria Licciardi acquired arrested, La Repubblica, 15 June 2001 (translated version)
1 2 Behan, See Naples and Die, pp. 263
1 2 three 4 5 Mafia Mamma Archived 2008-08-20 on the Wayback Machine
1 2 three Fiandaca, Women and the Mafia, pp. 15
1 2 Italy‘s most wished Mamma, The Guardian, 30 June 2000
↑ Deadlier than the male Archived 2009-09-01 on the Wayback Machine, The Scotsman, 29 May 2002
↑ Godmothers rise on Naples crime turf, The Related Press, 19 August 2009
↑ “Positive pena, scarcerata Maria Licciardi”. la Repubblica.
↑ “Blitz Secondigliano, Maria Licciardi ‘a piccerella è in fuga”. Fanpage.it. 26 June 2019.
↑ “Annullata l’ordinanza di custodia cautelare, Maria Licciardi è libera”. Stylo24.it. 12 July 2019.
↑ “Reputed mafia ‘godmother’ arrested at Rome airport”. The Guardian. Associated Press. 7 August 2021.
References
[edit]
Behan, Tom, ed. (2002). See Naples and Die: The Camorra and organized Crime. London/New York: Taurus Publishers. ISBN 9781860647833.
Fiandaca, Giovanni (ed.) (2007), Girls and the Mafia: Female Roles in Organized Crime Buildings, New York: Springer ISBN 0-387-36537-zero
Additional reading
[edit]
Nadeau, Barbie Latza (2022). The Godmother: Murder, Vengeance, and the Bloody Wrestle of Mafia Ladies (Paperback). New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0143136118.
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