ROME: A horrific triple murder in southern Italy in an apparent score-settling between rival mafia drug gangs has shocked the country, with a chorus of outrage over the youngest victim—a three-year-old boy.

The boy, a man believed to be his grandfather and a woman believed to be his 52-year-old grandfather’s Moroccan girlfriend were found in a burnt-out car in an isolated spot in the Calabria region on Sunday.

“How can you kill a small human being like this? This goes beyond any limit,” prosecutor Franco Giacomantonio was quoted by Italian media on Monday as saying.

“This is something unprecedented, horrific. In many years of work I think this is the most vicious murder I have ever been faced with,” the prosecutor said.

Investigators said they believed the three were killed and their car was then set on fire. Forensic work is still going on to work out their identities.

Nunzio Galantino, the bishop of the mountain town of Cassano allo Ionio where the three were from, held a special prayer on Sunday by the car as police took out the skeletal remains—one of which was in the boot.

“I am shocked by the level of violence shown by whoever carried out these killings. How can you not hear the cries of a little boy?” Galantino said.

The man is believed to be Salvatore Iannicelli, who was under house arrest for drug trafficking and had gone missing on Saturday. Iannicelli had also been charged in 2012 with kidnapping and sexual violence against a woman.

The boy, believed to be Nicola Campolongo, known as “Coco”, is the son of Iannicelli’s daughter, who is in prison for drug trafficking along with the boy’s father.

He lived with his mother in prison for over a year as a baby and once attended a court hearing with her but had since been left in the custody of his grandfather.

The killing was seen as another sign of the end of the historic “honour code” for the local ‘Ndrangheta mafia that once spared children, women and the elderly.

The La Stampa newspaper said that since the killing of an elderly local boss in 1975 “the rules were broken and there has been no limit to the barbarity”.

The powerful and secretive ‘Ndrangheta plays a leading role in the global cocaine trade and its bastion, the Calabria region, is a major transit point for drug shipments from Latin America to the rest of Europe.

Source: http://manilatimes.net/shock-in-italy-over-little-boys-mafia-linked-killing/69152/

This is truly bad ! Couldn't believe it when I read it , poor poor kid

I am sure there will be revenge for this.

Men of 'honour' huh?
The 'honoured' society?

My fucking arse.

At first, I thought the mafia used a little boy to commit a triple murder. Fuck I'd rather have read that than a 3 year old boy being murdered and set ablaze.

Women and children have gotten hit before, correct?

Does the american lcn or italian version have unwritten rules preventing such attacks?

My knowledge of lcn is VERY VERY limited and doesn't go beyond fictionalized accounts of it in pop culture...and having said that...Didn't young pre-teen Don Vito flee his native Corleone, Sicily because there was a greenlight on him because of a vendetta involving his father ?

I'm not being callous about the death of the young boy, just have a hard time believing that there wasn't already documented case of organized crime greenlighting hits on women and kids.

This is revolting!

I don't know why they'd be "shock" over this in Italy. Maybe in this day, but certainly not shocking over the decades.

Anyway, I've heard this is not the work of 'ndrangheta, but of the gypsy clans. And the gypsies are totally capable of carrying this out. They're garbage. And if anyone wants to call me racist against the gypsies, then so be it. They're trash and will slit their own mother's throat for a buck.

When my mother-in-law and father-in-law are in the US and not in their house in Sicily, the gypsies have broken into their house in the past winters and moved in with their family to keep warm, b/c they have no place to go. The police turn a blind eye b/c they have children that need warmth and food. That's the way it is.
So fuck these gypsies, they don't care about blowing a kid up.

I was going to post the exact same thing. Angry? Yes. But shocked? I don't see how. It's a different ballgame over there. Women, children, cops, judges, prosecutors, you name it, they'll kill them.

Re the gypsies: They're human garbage. But I just want to clarify something. The Romani (the gypsies) aren't necessarily Romanian. Some of them are, but not all of them. They can come from anywhere in Eastern or Central Europe.

I'm just pointing this out because I've known some decent Romanians in my day. But the Romani gypsies? It's like Carm said, they're fucking garbage.

Why don't the Sicilians just clip them? Or are they in some way a part of the mafia down there?

Pope urges apparent mafia killers of 3-year old to repent

- Pope Francis urged the killers of a three-year-old boy murdered in southern Italy as part of an apparent mafia hit to repent on Sunday after a crime that he said was unprecedented. The charred body of Nicola Campolongo, known as "Coco", was found along with that of his grandfather Giuseppe and a young Moroccan woman in a burnt-out car in the town of Cassano Jonio near Cosenza in Calabria last week.

According to Italian media reports, investigators believe the boy's 52-year-old grandfather Giuseppe Iannicelli was the real target of mafia killers who shot all three people in the car in the head before apparently torching the vehicle. "This violence against such a small child seems without precedent in the history of crime," the pope said during his weekly Angelus address in St Peter's Square. "Let us pray with Coco, who is certainly with Jesus in heaven and for the people who carried out this crime, so that they repent and convert to the Lord," he said.

The murder of the 3 year-old was a shock even in a country long accustomed to mafia violence. Italian media reported that Iannicelli was linked to drug trafficking, a speciality of 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia that has seized control of much of the trade and which is seen as one of the world's most dangerous criminal organisations.

Read more at: http://www.firstpost.com/world/pope-urge...rce=ref_article