PALERMO, Italy, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- Italian police arrested 37 suspects Monday in a drive against Palermo's leading Mafia family, a prosecutor said.
The dragnet targeting jailed boss Salvatore Lo Piccolo's gang follows a series of campaigns against the Sicilian Mafia and its Neapolitan and Calabrian cousins, the Camorra and 'Ndrangheta, ANSA reported.
Monday's raids were the culmination of a campaign that has crippled the Cosa Nostra's most powerful clan in Palermo, bringing the number of arrests up to 184, including the 2007 capture of Lo Piccolo and his son, Sandro, the report said.
Police said the sweep was made possible by cracking the codes found in documents at Lo Piccolo's hideout. They also won the cooperation of extortion victims who usually are too frightened to report intimidation.
''For once I can say that we managed to break down the wall of omerta [silence] that the victims of extortion usually hide behind,'' Palermo prosecutor Francesco Messineo said.
''Businessmen and shopkeepers admitted they came under pressure from the syndicates and contributed to the probe, albeit not of their own initiative, when faced with the investigators' findings."
