The ‘dead man walking’ vows to crush mafia
HANDS in pockets, Covid mask on... Nicola Gratteri passes for any businessman going about his work.
The portly 62-year-old is a popular figure in his home town of Catanzaro in southern Italy.
But he’s no ordinary local – as the presence of police protection officers behind him shows.
Gratteri is the man whose life’s work – to crush the mob – has come to a head with the trial of 325 alleged gangsters.
And that, according to his mafia enemies, leaves Gratteri a “dead man walking”.
The police prosecutor is trying to bring down one of the wealthiest and most feared crime organisations in the world, the Ndrangheta mafia of Calabria.
Days ago, he strode into a huge, purpose-built courtroom to begin proceedings in a case being watched by the world.
The list of charges is huge. Murder. Extortion. Drug trafficking. Money laundering.
All the while, the threat to Gratteri’s life is very real.
He has lived under guard for almost half his life. As far back as 1989, a gunman fired at his girlfriend’s house, saying: “You are marrying a dead man.”
Now married with children, he lives in a walled compound.
He can’t move a muscle without advising his police escort and says he hasn’t been able to eat out in 20 years or go to the cinema in 30 years. He travels only in armoured cars.
A workaholic, he goes to bed at 10pm and sometimes gets up at 2am to work on his cases.
He winds down by tending vegetables in his walled garden. He says: “I’m a man in a cage. But in my mind, I’m a free man. I can say what others can’t, because
they can be blackmailed. They’re afraid. Because they’re cowards.”
The mission to destroy the mafia is rooted in Gratteri’s upbringing in the small town of Gerace. He was the third of five children, the son of a grocer.
Gratteri remembers going to school one day and passing a body at the side of the road.
CHANGE
Outside school, the children of mafiosi were already learning the ropes. He recalls: “I used to see the children of the Ndranghetisti, and they were already acting like ‘little Ndranghetisti’, and I couldn’t accept that violence.
“And so I thought, when I grow up, I have to change things.”
Gratteri went to university in Catania, Sicily, and became a magistrate in 1986.
Having grown up in Calabria, amid the sons and daughters of mafiosi, Gratteri understands the mentality of those he now pursues. He has managed to turn some mobsters into informants.
But for decades no one could even prove the Ndrangheta network existed. That changed in a 2010 show trial which Gratteri helped prosecute.
It established the existence of the Ndrangheta as a criminal organisation. Gratteri also proved ties to the New York mob and South American drug cartels.
He was also the architect of a 2014 sting in which cops working across three continents seized 1,000lb of cocaine bound for Italy.
The latest case follows a huge probe codenamed Rebirth. It began in 2015 and climaxed in 2019 as 3,000 cops were deployed simultaneously in Italy, Bulgaria and Switzerland.
Investigators have zeroed in on the Mancuso family, one of the most powerful Ndrangheta clans.
Witnesses include Emanuele Mancuso – son of Ndrangheta boss Luni and nephew of Luigi Mancuso, 66, known as The Uncle and Supremo. Luigi is the prosecution’s No1 target.
Emanuele has turned supergrass – declaring in an open letter that the birth of his daughter triggered his decision to “flip”.
He wrote: “I decided to collaborate with the court soon after her birth with the hope of offering her a different future far away from the social and criminal context to which I belong.”
But this isn’t just about nailing mobsters. Politicians, lawyers and police are on the payroll, and Gratteri wants to expose that.
He says: “Today’s mafia is evolving, less likely to use violence, but no less dangerous.
“A reduction in morals and ethics made it easier to corrupt officials. They have increasing access to polite society.
“These days you can find a professional at the same table as Ndranghetista, which you never would in the past. They are not Martians – they live among us.”
Even Covid gives opportunities to the mafia, allowing them to invest in legitimate business.
Gratteri adds: “If they help out a family with a few hundred euros now, it buys loyalty later.” He hopes the trial will allow victims to speak out and the region can turn the tide. “By doing things right, in a couple of years we will talk about a different Calabria,” he says.
I saw body on way to school and kids were little mafiosi ...I could not accept that NICOLA GRATTERI ON THE MEMORY THAT DROVE HIM ON