Naples Crime Boss, Sicily Capo Jailed as Italy Strikes at Mafia

Paramilitary police raided a villa before dawn Friday and captured a long-sought fugitive described as the No. 1 boss of the Camorra, the Naples-based underworld organization.

In Rome, police arrested a convicted Sicilian Mafia boss sought for two years.

The arrests brought to four the number of gangland fugitives captured in Italy this week, a sign that the nation has stepped up its battle against organized crime following the murders of two anti-Mafia crusaders.

In Germany, meanwhile, police said Friday that they arrested an Italian underworld fugitive, Antonio Riezzo, 46, on Wednesday and were investigating attempts to build organized crime in Germany.

They said Riezzo had apparently been living in Munich under an assumed name since January. He disappeared in 1987 during a furlough from an Italian jail.

Italian officials said reputed Mafia boss Carmine Alfieri, 48, sought for 11 years, was found in an underground concrete chamber of a villa in Naples.

Two bodyguards were also arrested, police said.

Police said Alfieri was wanted on a series of charges including allegedly having organized an attack on a rival gang in 1984 in which eight people were murdered.

Hours after Alfieri’s arrest, police in Rome seized Francesco Cannizzaro, 55, described as a power in the Mafia in Catania, Sicily.

He had been sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of drug trafficking and criminal association.

On Thursday, police in Rome arrested another suspected boss of the Camorra organization, Raffaele Stolder.

On Sunday, Giuseppe Madonia was arrested in Vicenza. Madonia was considered the No. 2 person in the Cosa Nostra in Sicily and a suspect in the murders of the two anti-Mafia crusaders, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.