Italian police arrests 27 in anti-mafia operation

Italian police arrested at least 27 people in an anti-mafia operation in Sicily on Sunday night, including a city council member in the regional capital Palermo.

Those arrested were variously charged with mafia association, extortion, and robbery.

City councillor Giuseppe Faraone, 69, is suspected of being linked to a local clan of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, and was charged with attempted extortion aggravated by mafia-like methods.

According to prosecutors in Palermo, he asked an entrepreneur running an electronic components company to pay "protection money" on behalf of a mafia boss operating in northern Palermo.

Faraone was elected to the city council in 2012 with a center-left list now ruling the Sicilian capital, but had previously run for center-right Christian-Democratic UDC party and served in the regional government and the provincial council.

A construction company working with the local church was also among those businesses allegedly hit by mobsters running the racket.

The operation was carried out in Palermo by Italian military and finance police. At least 20 of the 27 issued arrest warrants targeted people who were already in jail on other charges, prosecutors said.

A key contribution to the probe came from 14 businessmen who rebelled against the extortion and cooperated with authorities, local media cited investigators as saying. Their help was crucial to identify the alleged extortionists and the arrest, prosecutors said.

Recently, the strict code of silence that usually protects Sicilian mobsters was broken for the very first time even in one of the oldest mafia stronghold.

A businessman victim of extortion in Corleone, a village in the heart of Sicily where some of the most infamous bosses were born, decided to speak out and cooperated with investigators.

The entrepreneur's decision led to the arrest of a local boss and three other alleged mobsters. Endit