Sicily prepares for Mafia kingpins' comeback: Fears the island could see the return of mob rule as old bosses are released from prison after completing their sentences
•Mafia boss Giuseppe Dainotti, 67 was shot dead in Palermo, Italy, last month •Police say his murder signals renewed internal strife among notorious gang •Dainotti was released from prison in 2014 after two decades behind bars
There are fears that Sicily could see the return of mob rule, as former Mafia bosses are released from prison.
Mafia boss Giuseppe Dainotti, 67, was shot dead in broad daylight in Palermo, Italy, at the end of last month.
The motive for the murder is not clear, but police say the first high-profile Mafia hit in the Sicilian capital since 2010 suggests there may be renewed internal strife.
Prior to his death, Dainotti had been released from prison in 2014 after serving more than two decades behind bars for murder.
He was shot dead on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Mafia killing of magistrate Giovanni Falcone, leaving police and politicians wondering whether the date was specially picked to signal that the criminal gang was back in action.
Following the murder, people claimed to have seen nothing and only one person admitted to even hearing the gunfire. No arrests have been made so far.
Palermo police chief Renato Cortese said: 'The Mafia today is in search of a new leadership at a time when a lot of the old bosses are coming out of prison.
'The danger is that some bigwig will be released and try to put the Mafia back together again.'
Once all-powerful on Sicily, the world's most famous crime gang, known as Cosa Nostra, 'Our Thing', has been squeezed over the past two decades.
Many bosses were put behind bars, many of its businesses isolated and many locals ready to defy the gang.
However, after years of decline - with the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta overtaking it as Italy's most powerful mobsters - prosecutors believe it is trying to rebuild, starting with its drug trade.
Matteo Frasca, the head of Palermo's Appeals Court, said in a speech in January: 'The mafia organisation is once again looking to develop and maintain a total monopoly on the extremely profitable narcotics market.'
Italian prosecutors say the 'Ndrangheta has a stranglehold on cocaine trade, but Cosa Nostra is a major player in the Italian cannabis market, often importing the drug from northern Africa and selling it throughout Europe.
In March, police found 400kg (880lb) of cannabis, worth an estimated 3 million euros ($3.4million), floating just off the Sicilian coast after a drop-off went awry.
In May, police seized around 300kg of cannabis in a single raid in Palermo.
A senior anti-Mafia magistrate, who declined to be named, said: 'For a while, the Mafia depended on public work scams and extortion rackets for much of their money, but with the economy in such a dire straits here, they are returning to their old drug habits,'
Sicily's economic output fell more than 13 percent between 2008 and 2015 and is only slowly recovering, while the unemployment rate is 22 percent, twice the national average.
The deep recession has made it much more difficult for hard-up businesses to pay protection money, or 'pizzo' in Italian, to the Mafia and more than 1,000 firms have revolted against paying that in Palermo alone in little more than a decade.
In May, the trial started of nine men accused of extorting cash from a dozen stores in the city's central Via Maqueda, which were all run by foreigners, mainly Bangladeshis. Daniele Marannano, coordinator of the Addiopizzo (Goodbye pizzo) movement, said: 'It is an extraordinary affair. For the first time in Palermo, a group of foreign storekeepers rebelled. They rebelled together. It was a collective action.
'Lots of businesses still pay the pizzo, but they now want something back from the Mafia for their money - help fixing prices in their neighbourhood, help keeping difficult employees in check, help collecting unpaid bills.'
A local businessman, who did not wish to be named, said one of the consequences of the Mafia's decline was a rise in petty crime.
He complained that fruit groves operated by his family food company were regularly raided at night by small-time thieves.
'That never used to happen in the past. A fly couldn't land on a fruit tree without permission first from the Mafia,' he said.
The state's fight against the Mafia got serious in 1992 after the Cosa Nostra murdered two of Italy's top magistrates, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, triggering national outrage.
Successive governments introduced waves of anti-Mafia laws, allowing the state to seize mob assets, keep imprisoned members of the Mafia incommunicado and far from Sicily, and develop protection programmes for informers.
As a result, hundreds of mafiosi have been arrested over the past 25 years, including Salvatore 'Toto' Riina, the Boss of Bosses, who ordered the murders of Falcone and Borsellino. He is 86 and believed to be terminally ill and likely to die in jail.
However, many other less prominent mobsters who were caught up in the big anti-Mafia trials of the last two decades have either been freed, like Dainotti, or else are coming up for release, like Riina's nephew Giovanni Grizzaffi.
Police chief Cortese said: 'The last Boss of Bosses was Riina. He was never formally replaced and people felt kept in check by him, even when he was in jail. When he dies, you might see a power struggle.'
Rosario Crocetta, the governor of Sicily and anti-Mafia crusader, has been the target of at least three mob plots to kill him, most recently in 2010. He says the group is much reduced, but ever evolving.
'They are chameleons,' he said, with two bodyguards standing alongside his table at an outdoors cafe.
'You are never going to win total victory over the Mafia, just as you can never totally defeat evil.'
