Italy Sends Soldiers to South to Combat New Mafia
Italy is sending soldiers to Calabria in the south to fight a secretive and dangerous Italian crime network that's overtaken the fabled Cosa Nostra by expanding into cocaine trafficking around the world – with strong ties in Canada.
But the group is both feared and hard to prosecute because of a tightly knit, intricate family structure that discourages breaking the code of omerta, or silence -- a code that wasn't strong enough to protect more traditional Mafia families.
"There is a massive number of their people in North America, especially in Canada and Toronto," Alberto Cisterna, director of the Anti-Mafia Directorate, told the National Post.