Italians were given a salutary reminder on November 5th that not all crime in their country is committed by foreigners. At a house near Palermo, police seized Salvatore Lo Piccolo, the most senior Sicilian Mafia boss still at large. He had been on the run for 24 years. His son Alessandro and two other mobsters were arrested with him. All four men were on Italy's “30 most wanted” list.
It was the biggest victory in the fight against organised crime since April 2006 when Bernardo Provenzano, the Mafia's last capo di tutti i capi (“boss of all the bosses”), was found hiding in a semi-derelict farm building. Notes that he had written showed that he was running Cosa Nostra with the help of two other men. One was arrested two months later. The second was Mr Lo Piccolo.
Investigators said that, unlike Mr Provenzano, Mr Lo Piccolo's writ did not seem to run to the whole island. But the chief anti-Mafia prosecutor, Piero Grasso, still declared that the Mafia had been “decapitated”. That may not be undiluted good news. Any power vacuum in the organisation could lead to a ferocious fight that spreads a pall of terror over western Sicily. This time the situation may be aggravated by the return of several powerful Mafiosi who fled to America after most recent such war in the 1980s.
11月5日，意大利人得到了一个有益的提醒：他们国家的犯罪活动不都是外国人干的。在巴勒莫附近的一间房子里，警察抓住了在逃的西西里黑手党最大的头头萨尔瓦托雷·洛皮科洛。他在逃已经24年 。他的儿子阿莱山德罗和另外两个黑手党成员和他一起被捕。4个人都是意大利“30个最重要的通缉犯”名单上的人。
这是自2006年4月黑手党最后一个“教父中的教父”贝尔纳多·普罗文扎诺在一间半废弃的农舍中落网以来打击有组织犯罪所取得的最大的胜利。贝尔纳多·普罗文扎诺所写的便条表明，他在领导“我们的事业”(黑手党犯罪集团的秘密代号)时得到了另外两个人的帮助。其中一个两个月以后被捕，另一个就是洛皮科洛先生。
