Italian police announce major arrests against mob

Italian police arrested one of the country’s “most dangerous” fugitives in raids early Tuesday that netted at least 70 suspected members of the Naples-based Camorra crime syndicate. The search for dozens more was still underway, police said.

Officers in the southern city of Caserta, 12 miles north of Naples, said they arrested Franco Letizia shortly after midnight in a home in a nearby town. Letizia, 31, is accused of running extortion rackets and is the suspected chief of the Bidognetti crime clan.

Investigators believe Letizia took the reins of the clan after the capture in January of Giuseppe Setola, who was considered the mastermind of a bloody crime spree last year to eliminate rivals and punish businessmen who refused to pay protection money to the Camorra.

Arrested along with Letizia were two suspected mobsters accused of helping him elude capture. Letizia, who is on Italy’s list of the 100 most dangerous fugitives, had been on the run for more than a year. Caserta police said they pinpointed his hide-out in San Cipriano d’Aversa after several months of intercepting phone conversations.

In a separate operation in Naples, Police Chief Vittorio Pisani said officers from several forces delivered a major blow to the Camorra’s Amato-Pagano clan. Paramilitary police said that by early afternoon, at least 67 suspects had been arrested in and around Naples. Suspected crime boss Raffaele Amato was arrested in Spain on Saturday.