Jailed mobsters ’sent messages via DJ song requests’

[The Streets Don't Love You Back]

Radio station among businesses closed as 30 arrested over involvement in Calabrian mafia

“I’m gonna write a little letter,” sang Chuck Berry. “Gonna mail it to my local DJ.”

Alleged mafia godfather Salvatore Pesce did the same but not just because he needed “a shot of rhythm and blues”.

Rather Pesce, jailed five years ago on suspicion of international narcotics trafficking, and his fellow mobsters are accused of using a local radio station to send coded messages to each other.

On Wednesday Radio Olimpia, a station that operated an unlicensed transmitter from premises in the mafia-ridden city of Rosarno, was one of five companies closed and sequestered by police in an operation that also led to the arrest of 30 people accused of involvement in the Calabrian mafia or ‘Ndrangheta. Another 10 for whom arrest warrants were issued were still on the run.

Michele Prestipino, the deputy chief prosecutor of Reggio Calabria who co-ordinated the operation, wryly codenamed Operation All Inside, told reporters Radio Olimpia was “an important means of communication in the context of the clan’s strategies”.

It was particularly suited for sending messages to jailed mobsters such as Pesce, who police believe was keen to know about the outcome of an application by his lawyer for his release.

Police listening in on a conversation between Pesce and his wife at Palmi jail in southern Italy heard him talking about record requests and concluded there was more to it than a love of music.

According to a transcript leaked to the daily Il Giornale, Pesce told his wife, after scribbling down the name of a tune: “If it’s positive you send me [this] song on the radio tonight. If it’s negative you send me another.”

This week’s raids were the culmination of investigations launched four years two into two gangland murders. The Pesce clan is one of two that have traditionally held sway in a city that in January witnessed vicious clashes between local people and migrant workers.

As in many ‘Ndrangheta “families”, women played an important role. Seven of those arrested in Operation All Inside were women. They included one alleged to have been the clan’s treasurer – a key post normally occupied by a senior male gangster.THINK