Ex-Magliana Gang boss among 38 arrested
Salvatore Nicitra ran gambling ops in northern Rome say cops

(ANSA) - Rome, February 11 - A jailed former boss in the notorious Rome criminal organisation the Magliana Gang was among 38 people served arrest warrants in Italy, Spain and Austria Tuesday on charges of murder, racketeering and other gang-related offences.
Sicilian-born Salvatore Nicitra, 68, who has been in jail for two years for other mafia crimes, had taken over gambling operations in northern Rome by using mafia methods over the years since the Gang was busted, police said.
Police also said they had solved five cold cases, a four murders and an attempted murder, dating back to the 1980s with the operation.
In Italy, the arrests too place in Rome, Viterbo, Terni, Padua and Lecce.
"I'm a boss, I'll put the gambling machines and slot machines wherever I want," Nicitra was caught saying in a police intercept.
Police said Nicitra was "the king of Roma Nord".
In 1993, while Nictra was in jail on mafia charges, his brother and 11-year-old son disappeared without trace.
Their bodies have never been found.
In the operation, police also seized property worth some 15 million euros.
Nicitra was said to be a top aide to Magliana Gang kingpin and drug trafficker Enrico De Pedis aka Renatino, handling the gang's illegal gambling operations. "I had the most important gambling dens in Rome and the whole of Italy," he was also caught saying.
"You used to have to lower your head when you talked to me".
Carabinieri said: "Nicitra's criminal charisma was recognised and respected by all". Prosecutor Michele Prestipino said Nicitra "has always been a key man in the dynamics of the Rome gang scene".
The Magliana Gang was an infamous and extremely violent Rome group of the 1970s that was the subject of Michele Placido's 2005 movie Romanzo Criminale and a spin-off TV series of the same name. Names after the Rome district where it was set up, the magliana Gang had links to Italy's three main mafias 'Ndrangheta, Cosa Nostra and Camorra and has also been linked to rightist terrorist bombings and murders to destabilise Italy in the 'Years of Lead' of leftist and rightist terror in the 1970s and 80s.
Conspiracy theorists have also linked it to other murky crimes including the killing of mud-raking journalist Mino Pecorelli, the killing of God's Banker Roberto Calvi, and the disappearance of a 15-year-old Vatican resident, Emanuela Orelandi.