Lucio Aquino can leave prison with ankle bracelet
Lucio Aquino was told on Monday that he can go home with an ankle monitor. De Maasmechelaar has been in prison since May last year for his extradition file in an Italian investigation into the mafia clan 'ndrangheta. He may be able to go home on Wednesday or Thursday.
Phillip Pergens
Source: Belga
Yesterday at 10:39 PM
The Antwerp Indictment Chamber (KI) gave Lucio Aquino a small birthday present on Monday. On the day of his 62nd birthday, the man from Maasmechelen was told that he would be placed under electronic surveillance. He was arrested in May 2023 and locked up in a cell during an international police operation in which dozens of raids and arrests were made across Europe in the Italian-Belgian mafia investigation Eureka. The Italians are requesting his extradition because they want to try him in a large-scale drug case. Aquino is suspected of facilitating several cocaine transports and embarking them via an Italian port. He is said to have worked closely with members of the infamous 'Ndrangheta clan, mafiosi from Calabria.

Five tons of cocaine
But first the large-scale Belgian drug case Costa awaits. During the preliminary hearing on March 28 in Tongeren, Aquino will be told when he will have to answer for the suspicion of smuggling more than 5 tons of cocaine. This promises to be a monster trial, because with Bandido Geert Frisson, Dutch top gangster Bolle Jos, ex-german policeman Willy Vanmechelen and his Antwerp business partner Tom B., there are many big names among the more than fifty defendants. All together, the ringleaders and their associates traded at least 27 tons of cocaine.

Escape
The fact that Aquino can continue serving his pre-trial detention at home will be a great relief for him. In June 2023, the sixty-year-old ended up in the heavily secured prison department of Bruges. The investigators had information that he had escape plans. Only there he was barely two cells away from Martino Trotta. He is the arch-enemy of the Aquino family after being sentenced to 28 years in prison for his role in the murder of Lucio's younger brother Silvio. The escape plans could not be proven and Aquino was taken from Bruges in November.