Witness wasted in mafia garbage trial

NAPLES, Italy, June 3 (UPI) -- Italian authorities are scrambling after the killing of a key witness on the links between politicians and mafia mobsters controlling garbage pickup.

The midday shooting Monday of "super-witness" Michele Orsi, 47, was the fourth killing in a month of witnesses who were expected to turn state's evidence. Orsi, who owned a waste disposal firm, was supposed to provide testimony linking Naples garbage crisis to Camorra gang members and a prominent member of Silvio Berlusconi's governing Freedom People alliance, reported The Guardian newspaper Tuesday.

Police said the bar-room killing was impossible to reconstruct because no one would admit to having witnessed it. However they concluded that at least 18 shots were fired from two 9mm-caliber automatics with Orsi hit twice in the chest and once in the head.

"A formidable opportunity to strike at the clans has been lost," said Franco Roberti, the chief anti-mafia prosecutor of Naples to the daily La Republica paper. "(Orsi) had decided to talk (and) denounce all the bonds that link politics to the Camorra. His words would have angered many people. Too many of them had an interest in taking him out."