After dealing blows that left Sicily's Cosa Nostra reeling and making inroads against Calabria's potent 'ndrangheta syndicate, Italy's new war against organized crime is challenging the Camorra, after the mob carried out a brutal, monthslong murder spree that included gunning down six Ghanaian immigrants in one swoop. Camorra is the Naples regional mafia depicted in "Gomorra," a film just released in the United States.
In recent months, the government has sent 3,000 soldiers into other cities across Italy to help battle crime syndicates. Now it has poured 500 soldiers and 400 police investigators into the region northwest of Naples, with most patrolling the flat, bleak, provincial countryside that is under the sway of the Casalesi, so named for its stronghold here in the town of Casal di Principe.
The deployment is set to last until December and could be extended if violence persists.
Using the military against criminals is not new - it has been done in Naples and Sicily - but the theory still stands that sending in troops can free up local police who know the territory to intensify the search for clues and suspects.
However, as shown by the brazen murder of the card player on Oct. 5, the Camorra is proving a fiercely tenacious enemy.
"They are not in decline. They are very strong economically," said magistrate Franco Roberti, who heads a team of antimob prosecutors in Naples.
The Camorra runs lucrative rackets ranging from numbers games to horse race betting, drugs, and smuggling immigrants. The Casalesi are also involved in illegal transport and disposal of tons of toxic waste from the industrial north to the underdeveloped south, according to a report by a parliamentary anti-Mafia commission.
But the Camorra, and in particular the Casalesi, thrive mainly on extorting "protection" money from a terrorized citizenry.
"You kill one to teach a lesson to 100," is how Rodolfo Ruperti, a police official in the provincial capital of Caserta, describes the thinking behind a murder spree blamed on the Casalesi, which has claimed at least 18 lives since spring.
