Anti-Mafia sting against Camorra sees hundreds of warrants served
This week in 1983, arrest warrants were served on nearly 900 people in a raid involving 10,000 armed police throughout Italy aimed at the Camorra, the Neapolitan version of the Mafia, whose drug-trafficking and other criminal activities were expanding on a global scale.
More than 280 of them were gangsters already in prison for previous Mafiarelated offences.
The most prominent arrests were Mr Enzo Tortora, one of Italy’s best-known television personalities, and Mr Antonio Sibilia, president of Avellino, a first division football club.
Among others picked up by the Italian police were some local politicians and village mayors from the Social Democrat and Christian Democrat parties in the Naples area, the chaplain at the Ascoli Piceno prison, the chief warder at the Trieste prison, a lawyer of the Camorra boss, Mr Raffaele Cutolo, and a Roman Catholic nun.
Back on home soil, Mrs Thatcher returned to London in a triumphant mood after wresting a commitment from her Common Market summit partners to repay Britain £450 million.
Settlement of the contentions rebate cleared the way for six months of tougher and more crucial negotiations on the whole future of the European Community.
In other news, gunmen killed 16 people and wounded many others when they opened fire on cars and passers-by in the north Lebanese port of Tripoli.
The men fired wildly in all directions, raking cars and shops with bursts of automatic fire, according to local residents.
Fighting between proSyrian militias, mainly composed of Alawites and a Sunni Muslim group opposed to Syria’s military presence in Lebanon had been going on in Tripoli for several days.
In Beirut, a series of bomb blasts wrecked shops owned mainly by Christians in the Muslim-dominated western sector.
Five people were injured in the explosions.