A 51-year-old Mafia boss, previously convicted of murder and on the run since 1995, has been arrested by Italian police during a dawn raid on a chicken and rabbit farm in Somma Vesuviana, a town near Naples in Southern Italy.
Salvatore Russo is, says
Fox News, considered to be one of the 30 most dangerous Mafia fugitives currently being hunted by the police in Italy and he was given a life sentence following his conviction for murder and participation in organized crime.
The police discovered Russo during the farm raid on Saturday, only after they had torn down a wall to get to the hideout he had constructed for himself.
According to
AFP the police announced at a news conference that they had apprehended Russo at 7:00 am, shortly after the Camorra boss had returned from a hunting trip.
Initially believing the farm to be empty the police eventually found Russo, who had with him an Uzi machine gun, a Beretta pistol and a shotgun, after tearing down the wall behind which he was hiding. Officers on the raid thought that the wall did not seem in keeping with the rest of the building and so decided to tear it down.
The particular Camorra clan of which Salvatore Russo is reportedly the head is based in Nola, a town to the northeast of Naples, capital of the Campania region of Italy.
AFP notes that the police have said Russo's clan control illegal activity in 40 different towns in the area.
Based in and around Naples, a city of close to one million people and just a few miles from the volcano
Mount Vesuvius, the Camorra is allegedly 5,000 strong, with dozens of families involved in the organization. Clans are prone to fighting each other as well as fighting the authorities.
Also on the run since 1995 has been 62-year-old Pasquale Russo, brother of Salvatore. The older of the two brothers is wanted by the authorities in connection with mafia activities, murder and the concealment of bodies.
Italy's Interior Minister Roberto Maroni pointed to the arrest of Salvatore Russo as an example of the authorities' "extraordinary success against the mafia and the Camorra".
As reported on
Digital Journal Naples police recently released
footage of a murder which took place on a street in the city earlier in the year. The 53-year-old victim Mariano Bacio Tarracino had connections to a Camorra clan and it is thought that his death is connected to a drug trafficking turf war between the clan to which he was linked and a rival clan.
