Hunting down the mafia in Italy | DW Documentary

Italian prosecutor Nicola Gratteri is on a mission -- against the mafia. After ordering the arrest of nearly 350 members of the notorious ’Ndrangheta syndicate, along with politicians and officials accused of assisting them, he is now launching Italy’s biggest mafia trial in three decades. The trial began in mid-January in the town of Lemezia Terme in Calabria, the heartland of the ‘Ndrangheta. The trial specifically targets the Mancuso clan, which has controlled the area of Vibo Valentia for decades and plays a key role in the smuggling of cocaine from South America. The largest court case of its kind since the Palermo maxi trials in the 1980s, this trial has been years in the making. In 2019, regional chief prosecutor Nicola Gratteri - who has lived under constant police protection for the past 30 years - dealt a major blow to Europe’s most dangerous mafia group, overseeing more than 350 arrests in coordinated raids that shut down businesses and seized dirty money. Leading witnesses, j