Naples 'hitman' held as President takes on Mafia

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Times
From Richard Owen in Rome



A LEADING Mafia hitman was arrested in Naples yesterday, hours after President Ciampi had visited the bloodstained heartland of Neapolitan gang warfare to urge residents to “root out the cancer” of organised crime.

As the President addressed local residents amid tight security, a Mafia drug-dealer was shot dead in a bar in the city and anti-Mafia prosecutors gave warning that the gangland violence and score-settling, which claimed the lives of 134 people in Naples last year, showed no sign of abating.

Four more gangland murders have taken place in the first four days of 2005.

The arrested man, Giovanni Cortese, had evaded a crackdown last month, when 53 members of the Camorra, the Naples network of Mafia clans, were rounded up. Police said that Signor Cortese, 24, was the chief hitman for Cosimo di Lauro, son of Paolo di Lauro, a Camorra Godfather nicknamed “The Millionaire”, who is on the run.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1427313,00.html