Italian police detain dozens of mafia suspects in Naples

May 19, 2009, 12:13 GMT

Naples, Italy - Italian police arrested Tuesday more than 60 suspected members of a Neapolitan mafia clan, including the wife of one of its alleged top bosses who was himself blocked by police in Spain two days ago.

The 44-year-old Elmelinda Pagano, wife of Raffaele Amato, was taken into custody along with the other suspects during morning raids in and around Naples, police said.

The Amato-Pagano clan is currently 'the most powerful clan in the city,' Naples police flying squad chief, Vittorio Pisani, told the Sky TG24 television news channel.

The clan rose to prominence after it emerged victorious in a bloody turf war in the early 1990s with the Di Lauro crime family.

The dealings and rivalries of the Camorristi mobsters in Naples' Scampia suburb are vividly described in the international bestselling book, Gomorra, by Roberto Saviano.

Tuesday's arrests stemmed from the interception of telephone calls made by Amato from his hotel hideout in Marabella, shortly before his arrest, police said.

Authorities also seized some 3 million euros (4.04 million dollars) of cash from a bank account in the Montecarlo, Monaco, believed to have been used by the clan to deposit some of its earnings from drug dealing.

Amato who was arrested in a joint Italian and Spanish police operation, is accused of eight murders between 1991 and 1993, and is believed to be one of the main importers of cocaine into Italy.

A fugitive from Italian justice since 2006, he had been living under a false name on the Costa del Sol.

Earlier Tuesday, in a separate operation, police arrested another leading fugitive Camorra boss, Franco Letizia , along with around a dozen suspected mobsters in the city of Caserta, some 30 kilometers from Naples.

The 31-year-old Letizia is accused of running extortion rackets and is the suspected chief of the Bidognetti crime clan, police said.