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Europe

Al-Qaeda turns to Italian mafia for protection

2005-10-22

Italian investigators say Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization is moving deep into the Mediterranean peninsula's underworld of organized crime. Italian media recently revealed that hundreds of Al Qaeda operatives coming from North Africa are being sent to Northern Europe though a maze of safe houses belonging to the Neapolitan Camorra, a Naples-based criminal network akin to the Mafia.

The internationally connected Camorra organization specializes in drug trafficking, prostitution, gambling and human and arms trafficking. Historically, the Camorra has worked with terrorist groups from all latitudes and political persuasions. According to Italian investigative sources, the Camorra could help Al Qaeda obtain forged documents and weapons for its operatives, who disembark almost daily from ships connecting Italy to the Arab countries of North Africa. In addition, in exchange for substantial cargoes of narcotics, these operatives are moved through Camorra's connections from Naples to Rome, Bologna, Milan and eventually to other major European cities such as Paris, London, Berlin and Madrid. "The connections are there and real," says Michele del Prete, a district attorney investigating the Algerian Islamic Brotherhood in Italy, "and the exchange currency cementing those trades is drugs."

The new Al Qaeda arrivals are swallowed by Naples' intricate network of alleys called vicoli, where traditional craft shops and street-level houses mix with computer stores, Chinese bazaars, pizzerias, merchant stalls, illegal casinos, antique boutiques, churches and museums. Structurally and socially similar to a Middle Eastern souk, this urban architecture and its social milieu provide familiar territory and an impenetrable refuge for Al-Qaeda. Boroughs like il Vasto, la Maddalena, il Pendino and i Quartieri Spagnoli, which border the railroad and port, also offer easy escape routes. "Should any trouble arise at any time, the Camorra's soldiers will see them off on one of the many trains leaving hourly from the city's main station, or via speed-boat -- the same vessels the Camorra uses to traffic cigarettes, drugs and illegal aliens," says Dario Del Porto, a reporter for Il Mattino, Naples's major daily.

According to a report by DIGOS, Italy's political crime unit, the number of Al Qaeda operatives who have chosen to seek refuge in Naples or have passed through the city on their way to Northern Europe may exceed 1,000. Many of them come from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt. Il Roma, Naples's second-largest daily, estimates their numbers could be as high as 5,000. "Nothing new here," affirms Giacomo Serafini, a Neapolitan political consultant. "The usefulness of these escape routes was tested during the years when the Camorra collaborated with domestic terrorists, red and black (Communist and Fascist) alike. Al-Qaeda doesn't even have to sweat. Not even the apparent absentmindedness of the police when it comes to apprehending Al Qaeda operatives should surprise. In the end it was a covert agreement between the state and the terrorists that spared Italy most of the carnage that was taking place in Europe during the 1970s." Serafini refers to a secret pact during the 1970s forged by Giulio Andreotti, one of modern Italy's founding fathers. In exchange for the safe passage of operatives and weapons, Arab terrorist groups -- mainly the Palestinian group Al Fatah -- agreed to refrain from attacking Italy.

The evolution of Al Qaeda into a criminal-terrorist group is not unusual, and does not necessarily signal an abandonment of its goal of establishing an Islamic Caliphate across the Middle East and North Africa. Instead, it may mark a skillful adaptation to the new environment created by the attacks against the organization since the start of the war on terror. "Something similar happened to Italian terrorist organizations once the Italian state stepped up its war on terror," Serafini says. Though they are not so powerful and deeply rooted as they were in the 1970s, domestic terrorist organizations like the Red Brigades still hit Italian political targets.

According to the Italian daily La Repubblica, the magnitude of this convergence has been recognized also by the United States, which recently moved the western headquarters of the Foreign Counter Intelligence -- the Naval Criminal Investigative Service's office for counter-espionage and counter-terrorism -- to Aversa, Italy. A town outside Naples with a large blue collar and underemployed population, Aversa in the past has been prime recruiting ground for Italian "terroristi" and political hotheads. From Aversa, FCI now scrutinizes terrorist activities from Scandinavia to South Africa.

Italians, in the meantime, are drawing lessons from their fight against the Mafia to devise new ways to combat Al Qaeda in Italy. "We should improve the way district attorneys, judges, investigators and intelligence operatives interact with one another, and exchange information," Franco Roberti, head of antiterrorism for Naples' Federal Court, told La Repubblica recently. "We need to create a National Antiterrorism Directorate with local ramifications, because terrorist cells are interwoven with local criminal networks." Roberti, who leads the Neapolitan Court, has taken the helm in pushing for the institution of such a directorate. The creation of a central commission to fight crimes of a political nature is an admission that investigators take the Al Qaeda threat very seriously. Italy did not take such steps even during the "Years of Lead" in the 1970s and '80s, when domestic terrorism raged.

Posted by:Dan Darling

#20 the BBC was doing a documentary on dark dealings in the Catholic hierarchy.

Oh, so that's where you got your conspiracy theory. Ah, yes...yawn..... Deep dark dealings by the church reported by the BBC.....ooooooh. Must be true if the BBC said so.

Posted by: Grush Tholuger7316 2005-10-22 23:24

#19 Accusing the UN of funding nuclear terrorism hasn't been enough to start a world war . . . yet.

Posted by: ryuge 2005-10-22 19:56

#18 For more information you can Google any of these guys. Here's one link for more info as I copied and pasted from some online articles in my previous commentary. I was only hoping to avert nuclear war. http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article317471.ece

Posted by: Danielle 2005-10-22 19:53

#17 My quotes were in italics before pasting them in and I wasn't the one referring to WWIII. The dear Archbishop Marcinkus is accused of trafficking in nuclear materials, among other things, as well as tied to the Mafia. The banking scandal was also tied to Panamanian and Nicaraguan banks, and Calvi resided in the Bahamas during this time. That is also about the time of the BCCI scandal that funded Pakistan's nuclear program and Iran-Contra. Besides the Dallop book, the BBC was doing a documentary on dark dealings in the Catholic hierarchy. We hear very little in the States, but Ireland was all abuzz on all the radio talk shows in 1996. The Irish Catholics were then threatening a split from the corruption in the Vatican. The RB posting commented on was tying Al Qaeda to the Mafia. You don't think accusing the Vatican of funding nuclear terrorism wouldn't be enough to start a world war?

Posted by: Danielle 2005-10-22 18:28

#16 Today, we are at war against terrorism. That's blindly obvious..ok. Are you refering to nuclear armageddon as WWIII?

Posted by: Red Dog 2005-10-22 17:23

#15 Yes, I comprendo the corruption part Danielle, but how is WWIII born from the facts?

Posted by: Red Dog 2005-10-22 17:16

#14 I donât know about the Bilderbergerâs but the dissing of conspiracy theories means you are overlooking some very interesting ties. Men like to compartmentalize everything but put all the preponderance of evidence together and start finding the common denominators, and youâll get a whole new perspective.
The Nov/Dec Biblical Archaeology Review has an article about Marine Colonel Bogdanos' recovery of looted Iraqi artifacts funding the insurgency. He is a prosecutor in private life in NY, and even had some loot delivered to him there. The museum is still missing priceless antiquities from thousands of years ago but some were recovered, stored in the Central Bank of Iraq's vaults. Obviously stolen by Baathists who knew what they were doing, some antiquities have been tracked to New York, Italy, the UK, and Jordan. "The wealthy Madison Avenue and Bond Street dealers who believe they are engaged in benign criminal activity are actually often financing weapons smuggling. In the last year, some of that money has also funded the insurgency in Iraq. Second, many in the mainstream art community are complicit in antiquities smuggling, often making the sale before the theft." The article also says the smugglers make no distinction between the goods, whether weapons, antiquities, or currency and explain why many countries are not interested in stopping this, as open borders are profitable borders. Others generate fees from customs and do not want to impose inspection fees or hinder the sheer volume of trade through international ports and free-trade zones. Sniffer dogs and security devices do not detect ancient alabaster and other gemstones, either. All this connects Iraqi thugs and wealthy collectors further. The Vatican contains one of the worldâs largest collection of art and artifacts.
Now search âLyonsâ in the RB archives; Baghdad imams and Orthodox priests from Bethlehem meeting at Catholic conferences, Interpol, Saudi funding of mosques, terrorist plots thwarted, and the recovery of Iraqi antiquities.
The Mafia and the Medieval Church both extorted âhell insuranceâ. Remember the guy swinging from the London bridge because he skimmed from the Mafia? Calvi and Archbishop Marcinkus were tied through the Vatican Bank. Archbishops are appointed for life personally by the pope to ensure continuity of church tradition, which does date back to the 13th century:

And so one of the most notorious figures in the history of the Catholic Church remains shrouded in secrecy. Archbishop Paul Marcinkus was president of the Vatican Bank from 1971 to 1989. As such, he held the purse strings for the international church. He was constantly seen accompanying Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul I and Pope John Paul II, and he was considered by many to be the second most powerful man in the church. He arguably held the most power in the Catholic Church of any American in the history of the church.

But by the early 1980s, Marcinkus was increasingly being implicated in massive financial scandals, scandals that spent months on the front pages of newspapers and magazines throughout Europe. His dealings were also the subject of several books published in the 1980s. In the mid-'80s, Italian authorities tried to arrest Marcinkus in connection with a stunning array of crimes, including assassination, financing, arms smuggling, and trafficking in stolen gold, counterfeit currencies and radioactive materials. Italian authorities also wanted to talk to Marcinkus regarding what he knew about numerous murders. Through the late 1970s and early 1980s, most every key player involved in schemes with Marcinkus ended up dead. A journalist investigating Marcinkus, the Vatican Bank, and their ties to the mob also was murdered at the time. But Marcinkus was never interviewed or arrested. Pope John Paul II sheltered Marcinkus in the Vatican, protecting him for seven years with Vatican City's sovereign immunity, an immunity granted to the Vatican in 1929 by Benito Mussolini. Then Marcinkus was shipped off to Chicago, his home. Then, soon after, he moved, or was moved by the church, to Sun City, Arizona.

These are excerpts either about it or from Robert Dallopâs book Godâs Banker:

The Shady Deals of God's Banker
Unsolved Mysteries, Italian Style
On February 20 of this year [1987], in a move that had no precedent, arrest warrants for three senior Vatican officials were issued by investigating magistrates in Milan. They were accused in a 1982 fraudulent-bankruptcy case, involving a loss far in excess of a billion dollars. One of them was American Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, then president of the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), the official name of the Vatican bank. Along with the other two men, his subordinates, he was facing the possibility of twenty years in prison.
The Vatican voiced "profound astonishment" on hearing the news, but the truth was that some of Pope John Paul II's closest advisers inside Vatican City believed Marcinkus guilty of one or another impropriety, and had long been urging his removal. Nevertheless the pope, without hesitation, threw the full weight of his earthly powers behind the archbishop, playing his sovereignty card. The Vatican, a state in its own right, would not hand over the wanted men.

Another person who wants Marcinkus to talk is Carlo Calvi. Calvi, a 49-year-old Montreal banker, wants to know what Marcinkus knows about the murder of his father, Roberto Calvi, who was the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, Italy's largest bank group until its collapse in the early 1980s that had close ties to Marcinkus and the Vatican Bank. Calvi's father was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London on the morning of June 19, 1982. At the time, the death was ruled a suicide. Calvi had been forced to flee Italy after his Banco Ambrosiano went bankrupt with debts of up to $1 billion. Much of that money, it was later learned, had been siphoned off via the Vatican Bank under Paul Marcinkus. The Vatican later paid $200 million to creditors after the bank's downfall. The Vatican admitted no legal responsibility, but did acknowledge it had a "moral involvement" in the case.

In the late 1990s, Italian criminal investigators exhumed Roberto Calvi's body. Using forensic technologies not available 20 years ago, pathologists determined that Calvi had indeed been murdered. They determined he had been strangled before he was hung from the bridge. Three known Mafiosi were arrested for the murder. And Carlo Calvi and Italian prosecutors would love to hear what Paul Marcinkus knows about what was, for him, a fortuitous death. At the time of his murder, Calvi allegedly was promising to provide proof of more money-laundering activities between the Vatican Bank and Banco Ambrosiano. "I want to try to ensure that we get to the bottom of things [in the case] and show that my father was not simply the victim of Mafia hoods," Carlo Calvi says.

Besides the most recent testimony by Vincenzo Calcara last week, testimony by known Mafiosi in the last decade has continually linked Marcinkus to money laundering of Mafia cash and other illicit moneys through the Vatican Bank. "Marcinkus is the key to so many things," Carlo Calvi told me in a phone interview last week. "But nobody can get to him."

The central event that brought on and continues to bring on so much of John Paul's tribulations was the mysterious death five years earlier in London of an Italian named Roberto Calvi. A strange, forbidding soul with a passion for cabal and secret societies, Calvi was a man of the world of finance, where he was understood to be intimately associated with Marcinkus and the IOR [Vatican Bank] and for that reason was known as "God's banker." How deeply and personally enmeshed he was began to emerge shortly after the discovery of his body early on the Friday morning of June 18, 1982.
Calvi had been missing from Italy for one week when a mail-room clerk of the Daily Express, walking to his job on Fleet Street, saw a man suspended from a scaffold under the Blackfriars Bridge. He was hanging by the neck, his feet dragging by the flow of the Thames. He had been dead for five or six hours. After the River Police got him down, a detective noted that the dead man's cuffs and pockets were bulging with chunks of bricks and stones. A body search turned up, among other things, the equivalent of $15,000 in cash and a clumsily altered Italian passport in the name of Gian Roberto Calvini, age sixty-two. These and many other details, but particularly the name of the bridge and the bricks and stones, would take on a sinister pall.
An inquest was held five weeks later. By that time enough of the story had come out to suspect that God's banker had been murdered by experienced criminals in the hire of one or more of his numerous enemies. Shortly before his death, he had publicly declared in a rare interview that he felt threatened and that "any barbarity" was possible. "A lot of people have a lot to answer for in this affair," he said, launching a counterthreat, "I'm not sure who, but sooner or later it will come out."
Disclosure was what it was all about, and the affair he was speaking of was a financial black hole in the Banco Ambrosiano, of which he was chief executive officer. The Ambrosiano was the largest private bank in Italy, and the amount in question was staggering: $1.4 billion in unsecured loans. Although it was then only a rumor, ninety percent of the debt had been incurred by all but worthless dummy corporations owned or controlled by the Vatican bank. What in the world the Holy See was doing with such a dizzying sum of money, was something Calvi knew better than anyone outside the city-state, and he had told his lawyers, "If the whole thing comes out, it'll be enough to start the Third World War."

Disclosure was what it was all about, and the affair he was speaking of was a financial black hole in the Banco Ambrosiano, of which he was chief executive officer. The Ambrosiano was the largest private bank in Italy, and the amount in question was staggering: $1.4 billion in unsecured loans. Although it was then only a rumor, ninety percent of the debt had been incurred by all but worthless dummy corporations owned or controlled by the Vatican bank. What in the world the Holy See was doing with such a dizzying sum of money, was something Calvi knew better than anyone outside the city-state, and he had told his lawyers, "If the whole thing comes out, it'll be enough to start the Third World War."

Perhaps exposure of these conspiratorial ties is what we need to prevent World War III.

Posted by: Danielle 2005-10-22 16:23

#13 Al-Qaeda turns to Italian mafia for protection

Yet one more fine reason to crush both into dust. I would have thought the mafia was more intelligent than this. If they're this incredibly stupid, they forfeit all due process and become one with the terrorists. Kill them all.

Posted by: Zenster 2005-10-22 16:03

#12 lotp, thanks for the hate. ;)

Posted by: Red Dog 2005-10-22 15:58

#11 I'm a bit surprised annon didn't include New Orleans in his theories.

It would have fit, actually, since there is good reason to believe that the Italian mafia first set up shop here in the 19th century in - you guessed it - the Big Easy.

This site gives a chronology that's pretty sound. It pushes the start of the Sicilian mafia back to the 13th century - earlier than I'd attribute it but not an unreasonable chain of influence. What is clear is that by the 15th century, private armies for hire roamed Italy and were, shall we say, not above shaking down people and cities for protection money. And these armies had private passcodes, rites of acceptance and a code of omerta not all that different from today's mafia.

US foreign policy? I can't quite find its impact in the 15th century on the Continent .... LOL

Posted by: lotp 2005-10-22 14:04

#10 And confused, Pappy.

The Mafia, whose roots go back to the private armies of the 16th century Renaissance, are the result of US foreign policy????

Sigh. Academic standards are abysmal lately if the schools are producing this kind of ignorance.

Posted by: lotp 2005-10-22 13:58

#9 I don't hate you. I just think you're a bit dim.

Posted by: Pappy 2005-10-22 12:25

#8 You forgot the Bilderbergers, a5089.

Posted by: Raj 2005-10-22 10:35

#7 His point is that every single thing in the world that does not go the way the BBC or NPR or AL-Jizz tells him it should, can eventually be blamed on the Joos or their American puppets.

Posted by: Grush Tholuger7316 2005-10-22 10:25

#6 You may hate me for saying this but itn mispeled anon

Posted by: Shipman 2005-10-22 09:33

#5 *Italian* mafia is the creation of US foreign policy? That's a new one.

Usually, the conspiracy theory is that mafia is the creation of Albert Pikes, 33rd freemason, illuminati and luciferian, that's much more interesting.

Posted by: anonymous5089 2005-10-22 09:18

#4 "mexperience" ah! peote?

Posted by: pihkalbadger 2005-10-22 08:32

#3 I hate you Annon 2005-10-22 01:59 .

Posted by: Red Dog 2005-10-22 04:27

#2 So your point is:

Posted by: Seafarious 2005-10-22 02:24

#1 Hey folks,
You will hate me to say that the both, mafia and the AL-QUADA are the creations of our stupid foreign policies and the both have come to roost here to kill us here and all over the world. In world affairs, if you create horrible satanists with no contol, this is exactly what happens. Ancient myths have told us about the same but no one in our administratin ever learned the chinese saying that the only difference between the smart and the stupid is that smarts learn from the mistakes of others and the stupids want to mexperience it again.

Posted by: Annon 2005-10-22 01:59

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