MARBELLA CLUB

Juan Antonio Roca was arrested for corruption in March 2006, police seized assets worth 2.4 billion euros ($3.4 billion), including a century-old palace in Madrid, a country estate equipped with a helipad overlooking the Rock of Gibraltar and a stud farm guarded by a tiger. According to a 451-page July 2007 indictment by Marbella prosecutor Miguel Angel Torres, Roca also owned a ranch to raise fighting bulls, a private jet, a helicopter and a painting by Spanish master Joan Miro.

Known in Marbella as “The Boss,” Roca has become Spain’s national symbol of municipal corruption amid the boom and bust of the country’s real estate industry.

“Marbella is a special case, but the conditions which allowed it to occur exist across the country,” says Jesus Sanchez-Lambas, a law professor and general secretary of Madrid’s Ortega y Gasset University Institute. “Corruption in town planning is institutionalized.” Roca, 55, who was convicted of bribing a judge in August by the High Court of Andalusia in Granada, is currently standing trial at Spain’s National Court in Madrid where, along with five other defendants, he’s charged with embezzling 36 million euros of public funds. Prosecutors are preparing to go to trial in connection with the 2007 indictment, dubbed Operation Malaya, against Roca and 85 others in Marbella, Madrid, Barcelona and San Sebastian. The charges include embezzlement, money laundering, dereliction of duty and bribery.

Roca’s lawyer, Jose Anibal Alvarez, said in December that none of the evidence proves that Roca took bribes, embezzled from city hall or laundered money. Spanish officials are making him a scapegoat for the corruption that’s widespread in city halls across Spain, he says. In December, Roca was in prison in Alhaurin de la Torre, a village outside Marbella.

Graft and bribery thrived along the Costa del Sol as the country rode a 15-year real estate boom, fueled by a plunge in interest rates, rising incomes and strong demand for second homes by sun-starved Northern Europeans. In 2006 -- the peak of Spain’s real estate surge -- municipalities issued 911,000 building permits, more than the U.K. and Germany combined. “They are swallowing up the coastline and the countryside,” Sanchez-Lambas says. “This is the legacy we will leave for our children.” Many of these homes have come onto the market in the past year after the global credit crunch curbed the supply of loans. R.R. de Acuna & Asociados, a Madrid-based real estate research firm, estimates that there are more than 1.6 million unsold homes in Spain, while annual demand for housing fell to 220,000 units in 2008 from a peak of 590,000 in 2004. Spain’s economy contracted for the first time in 15 years in the third quarter of 2008, after growing 3.9 percent in 2006. This year, it faces its worst recession since 1959, according to Dominic Bryant, an economist at BNP Paribas SA in London. Unemployment soared to 12.8 percent in October from 8.5 percent a year earlier. Spanish bank loans in arrears as a proportion of total lending climbed in October to 2.9 percent, or 54.2 billion euros from 0.9 percent a year earlier, according to the Bank of Spain. “We are seeing an intense increase in the ratio of bad loans,” Bank of Spain Governor Miguel Angel Fernandez Ordonez said on Oct. 30. “This has been particularly notable in the construction and real estate sectors.” Spain sowed the seeds of its real estate boom when it agreed to swap its currency for the euro. Before joining Europe’s monetary union in 1999, Spain had to impose economic discipline and bring down its inflation rate to European Union standards. After it did, the cost of home loans tumbled as the central bank slashed its benchmark rate to less than 3 percent at the end of 1998 from 13 percent in 1993. Household incomes rose as Spanish women began to enter the workforce, and foreign investment jumped more than 10-fold at its peak in 2007 as the euro brought financial stability. The newfound wealth and borrowing power created a potential bonanza for Spain’s 8,111 town halls, which have limited powers to raise taxes yet have to pay for local police, garbage collection and sports facilities. Spanish law does give the municipalities power to grant all permits for new homes, shopping centers and factories. “All they’ve got is land,” says Lorenzo Fernandez Fau, a former mayor of El Escorial, near Madrid. “So they’ve sold it.” Even many legal projects involve the mayor’s cutting a deal with developers, who may agree to build fire stations or put up street lamps in addition to paying for building permits.
Some officials also demand bribes. “Local administrators have the power to decide who gets rich and who stays poor,” says Victor Torre de Silva, a professor of law at Madrid’s Instituto de Empresa business school. “There’s a great temptation to share in the wealth that you can create.” That temptation may have ensnared Roca, who began his career as anything but wealthy. A native of Cartagena in the region of Murcia, which neighbors Andalusia, Roca trained as a mining engineer and then set up a property development company called Comarsa that was declared bankrupt in 1990. The following year, he moved to Marbella. At the time, the town was known for its celebrity residents, including King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, who built a palace modeled after the White House in Washington, except that the bathroom fittings were made of gold, according to Gorka Zamarreno, communications director of real estate company Aifos SA, who attended a party there.

Reporters Without Borders repeated its call for the release of Australian author Harry Nicolaides, facing a charge of the crime of lese-majesty, after he was yesterday refused bail by the Bangkok criminal court for the fourth time.
Australian author Harry Nicolaide%u2019s book Verisimilitude' -- according to one review -- is a "trenchant commentary on the political and social life of contemporary Thailand" Nicolaides, aged 41, who was formally charged on 21 November 2008, has been held at the capital's remand prison since 31 August. The charge relates to his book, Verisimilitude, which came out in 2005 in which he referred to the way an unamed Crown Prince treated one of his mistresses. Only 50 copies were ever printed. "We urge the Australian authorities to do everything within their power to secure the repatriation of Harry Nicolaides as quickly as possible", the worldwide press freedom organisation said. "He is being held in very harsh conditions and his morale is at a very low ebb." His lawyer made a previous request for bail on medical grounds on 22 November. It was rejected on the basis that there was a risk that Nicolaides could flee if he was set free. His brother, Forde Nicolaides, described the outcome as "regrettable".
"Harry is suffering from the difficult conditions at the prison and the terrible effects this is having on his welfare. (...) Ensuring his ability to cope and remain strong is now critical.

Yakuza have for centuries used extensive tattoos as a sign of belonging to any group, as well as to identify its position in the group.Furthermore, when joining the Yakuza peasants and artisans were new, militant-sounding names such as Tiger and Crane, Nine Dragons, roaring storm, etc., which are then applied in the form of paintings on the back or chest.This is often supplemented by artistic excesses and often designs covered the whole body until the head, hands and feet, as well as the genitals.

Paul Merle Eischeid 36, was a Charles Schwab stockbroker before he joined the Hells Angels motorcycle gang in Phoenix, Ariz.He is wanted in connection with the savage beating and stabbing death of a Phoenix woman in 2001, a murder believed to have been committed by several members of the notorious gang.



Cynthia Garcia, 44, was intoxicated when she “mouthed off” to some Hells Angels at their clubhouse in Mesa, Ariz., where she would routinely hang out, according to reports. She was assaulted by some members and warned to keep quiet about it. When she refused, she was viciously attacked, beaten and stabbed. The attackers then threw Garcia into the trunk of a car and drove to a remote location of the desert, where they continued to stab the woman as she lay dying.
It was one of the most grisly murders in recent American criminal history, U.S. Marshals service director John F. Clark said of the crime.Two years later, Eischeid was one of 50 Hells Angels members and associates nabbed in a sweep of motorcycle gang violence in Phoenix. Although he was implicated in Garcia’s kidnapping and murder, a judge allowed him to be released on bail to await trial because he was holding a steady job as a stockbroker and had a relatively clean criminal record, America’s Most Wanted reported.But after his release, Eischeid somehow removed the tracking device he was ordered to wear, and he fled. He hasn’t been heard from since.
Eischeid is now a fugitive, believed to be roaming the country with help from his Hells Angels cronies. He was added to the Marshals’ list of top 15 most wanted last year.“He bounces around from location to location wherever there is a [Hells Angels] member that is willing to take him in,” Deputy U.S. Marshal Matt Hershey said.
The U.S. Marshals have not ruled out the possibility that Eischeid is in another country, as his last confirmed sighting places him in Calgary, Canada, last year. Canadian immigration authorities have since issued a warrant for his arrest.
Eischeid blends in easily due to his appearance, which he cares a lot about. He is well groomed, works out often and is rarely seen without clean clothes, according to Hershey. He is extremely talented with finances, and could be working as an online trader.One conspicuous characteristic of Eischeid’s appearance is his torso, arms and back, which are covered in colorful tattoos.“[His body] is hard to cover up,” Hershey said.Eischeid, who also goes by the name Jason Daniel, is a white male, 5-foot-7 and 190 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair. His last name is tattooed across his stomach, and “Hell 666 Bound” is on his lower back. He may be wearing glasses.

Paul Hickey entered a guilty plea of ‘homicide, without forethought’. Hickey admitted the killing near Alicante in Spain, but only due to diminished responsibility because of the amount of drugs he had taken. The admission was made as part of a bargaining plea, in which he wants a sentence of no more than 10 years. News of the plea bargain negotiations came as Celine’s heartbroken family arrived at the Spanish courthouse in Elche on the Costa Blanca for the start of the trial.
It is alleged that Hickey left Celine dying in the Spanish holiday apartment for 7 hours. Lawyers for the 31-year-old told a packed Spanish courtroom he should be jailed for ten years for homicide without forethought. “It was a bloody crime but it wasn’t planned, it was with fury and rage,” Hickey’s lawyer said. The court also heard that both Hickey and Celine had drugs in their system on the night of her killing in 2005. Hickey, from Darndale, was accused of beating mum-of-three Celine to death in front of their children at their holiday home in Torrevieja, Alicante on August 27, 2005. The couple had been staying there with their three children now aged 12, nine and five. The prosecution has alleged Hickey beat Celine to death, forced the children to walk past her body and left her dying for seven hours. Dressed in a white and blue tracksuit, Hickey sat at the front of the courtroom while the indictment was read out. None of the Conroy family were permitted inside the court when the hearing got under way before a jury of seven men and four women. Up to 20 members of Celine’s family including her parents Sandra and David arrived at the court this morning. Many members of the Conroy family were dressed in black as they emerged from two people carriers outside the courthouse. News of the plea bargain came within minutes of Hickey arriving in the back of a Guardia Civil van, greeted by a throng of photographers. He stuck his tongue out at them as he was taken into the courthouse. A jury was selected an hour later and the court opened to the public. It is understood the prosecution has advised the Conroy family to agree to the plea-bargain deal. Judge Gracia Serrano Ruiz would then have to formally hear Hickey’s plea and the evidence against him, before imposing sentence. Celine had just turned 28 when she was brutally beaten to death on a Spanish holiday. Prosecutors claimed that Hickey continued to kick and punch her after he knew he had used enough force to kill her. Hickey has been detained in Spain since Celine’s death more than three years ago. The prosecution alleged that the beating was so severe that Celine had all but two of her upper teeth kicked out. “Most of the blows delivered by Hickey were unnecessary to attain his goal of killing Celine Conroy,” according to one prosecution document. “But he continued to beat her forcefully and deliberately to increase her suffering,” it stated. The prosecution alleged that while Celine was lying on the ground, Hickey ordered the children to come out of the bedroom and walk past her battered body. Prosecution documents also alleged that he failed to help her and had a shower before going to bed. The document alleged that Hickey attacked Celine at 9pm and she lay dying until 4am while he slept. He was alleged to have inflicted 35 injuries on Celine as she lay on the ground, with 14 of the wounds to her face and neck.
Celine’s body was not found until 12.15pm the following day, August 27, when Hickey’s aunt, Nora Armitage, let herself in. She immediately called the police who arrested Hickey. The Conroy family spent weeks in a fraught struggle to have their daughter’s remains returned to Ireland. Celine’s heartbroken mother, Sandra, who was battling cancer, turned to Marian Finucane on her RTE radio show to tell her of the problems of having Celine’s body released for burial. After the show, Galway solicitor Tom McGinty rang the show and volunteered his help to the Conroys.
The highlighting of the case also brought a visit from then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern who met Celine’s parents, Sandra and Davy, and said he has asked the Irish Ambassador in Spain to personally intervene to expedite the return of her remains. A candle-lit vigil was held outside Sean Treacy flats in the inner city and hundreds of local people and businesses donated money to help with cost of bringing Celine home. Sandra, with the help of her family, has looked after Celine’s three children since her death. Some 60 days after she was beaten to death, Celine Conroy was finally laid to rest. Her then five-year-old daughter, Chloe, brought a card to the altar which read: “I love you mammy. I miss you, I really miss you. I hope heaven is nice and you’re having a good time. Love, Chloe.” Celine’s aunt Patricia spoke of how Celine spent her summers while she was growing up visiting her home in England.

Irishman has been arrested in England in connection with an investigation into a drug smuggling ring in Spain and Scotland.Five others from Scotland and England were arrested in raids in Marbella on the Costa Del Sol and in Tenerife in the Canary Islands.The Irish man - believed to be from Dublin - was arrested after the lorry he was driving was stopped near Oxford at the end of October.Around 70 kilos of speed was found hidden in a cargo of plastic containers.Cash, luxury cars and a boat were seized in the swoops in Spain.

Ottawa cocaine dealer Hussein El-Hajj Hassan made powerful enemies in the narcotics trade when he bypassed his main supplier, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday, and that's how he ended up bludgeoned, shot to death and mutilated on Aug. 24, 2004. In her opening statement in the murder trial of one of his alleged killers, assistant Crown attorney Andrea Blakeley said Mark Yegin, a bodyguard to that supplier, drove Mr. Hassan to an isolated forest clearing in the west end where the pair met two other men: Mr. Yegin's boss, Fadi Saleh, and Montreal cocaine dealer Shant Esrabian.Moments later, Mr. Hassan was shot and killed, Ms. Blakeley said. His body was found on June 28, 2005 when Mr. Yegin led police to a grave in a wooded area off Panmure Road. Ms. Blakeley said the Crown expects to present evidence that after the killing, Mr. Hassan's body was dragged into the woods, stripped down to underwear and socks, and buried."You will hear evidence from a forensic anthropologist that prior to being buried - either before or immediately after his murder - his hand was severed from his arm," Ms. Blakeley said. "You will hear from a forensic pathologist that his skull was fractured and that he was shot at least two times."Mr. Yegin had known Mr. Hassan for about four months and worked as "the muscle" for him and his supplier, Fadi Saleh. Ms. Blakeley said Mr. Hassan had become unhappy with the way Mr. Saleh did business and decided to deal directly with Toronto cocaine supplier Rafei Ebrekdjian.In June or July of 2004, Mr. Hassan delivered $200,000 to Mr. Ebrekdjian, intending to buy cocaine directly from him instead of Mr. Saleh, Ms. Blakely said. He then went to Lebanon, staying there for about a month.By August, Mr. Ebrekdjian had received more than $400,000 from Mr. Hassan, who told associates he was expecting a large cocaine delivery on Aug. 21.Ms. Blakeley said Mr. Hassan was planning to meet Mr. Yegin on Aug. 20 and the two men were to meet Paul "Sasquatch" Porter - a top Hells Angels member who was expected to help Mr. Hassan settle a cocaine trafficking problem in Cornwall.There never was a meeting that night with Mr. Porter and Mr. Hassan never reached Cornwall, Ms. Blakeley said. Instead, Mr. Yegin drove Mr. Hassan to the wooded area off Panmure Road, where he was shot.After the Crown's opening, Ottawa police Sgt. Angela McDade testified that shortly after his arrest on June 27, 2005, Mr. Yegin showed police where Mr. Hassan's body was buried.Sgt. McDade said a convoy of three police cruisers reached the wooded area where the body was buried just after 2 a.m.
"As we got closer, (Mr. Yegin) pointed directly to a small mound of leaves," Sgt. McDade said. "It was very obvious he had been there before because he was able to tell us where we were going before we saw any stop signs or street signs."There was a bit of skin exposed. We definitely could smell the body." Soumia El-Hajj Hassan, Mr. Hassan's widow, said she knew that her husband became a cocaine dealer after he served a prison sentence for fraud. Mrs. Hassan said she became concerned when he did not return home on the night of his death and was told by Mr. Hassan's cousins that he had probably been killed. She said she was unable to discover what happened to her husband after questioning his associates, including Mr. Yegin.Tuesday, security at the trial was tight. There were metal detectors at the courtroom entrance and armed police officers inside and outside the court.

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An overabundance of homes in Spain’s beachside playground sends real estate agencies into crisis mode. Faced with rapidly deteriorating demand after decades of growth and construction, one of Europe’s most popular vacation and retirement destinations is showing signs of desperation, now offering buyers a deal usually reserved for corner stores.Left with a surplus of properties after a decade of rapid building to keep pace with the demand of vacationers and second-home buyers from Northern Europe, especially Britain, one developer is offering a buy one, get one free deal on homes along the legendary stretch of coast.Once home to movie stars and European aristocracy, the Costa del Sol, stretching from the regional capital of Malaga to the southernmost point of the country in Tarifa, has lately fallen on hard times thanks to overdevelopment, a faltering global economy and systematic corruption that has left entire towns bankrupt.The region, so dependent on the housing market, was left floundering, driving hundreds of developers and real estate agencies out of business, and forcing the few that remain to extreme measures. Salsa Immobiliaria, located in Malaga, has launched a special, offering a free golf resort apartment when purchasing a $1.1 million seaside home. While offering a free apartment may appear like a dramatic measure, Salsa said it would be preferential to lowering prices any more than they already have. “The price of new housing will not be reduced further because it already has been on several occasions,” Guillermo Chicote told the Spanish newspaper El Pais. “People shouldn’t expect home prices to go down 30 or 40 percent, because I’d as soon give the houses away to the bank before doing that.”
Despite drastic efforts to unload properties across the region, Spain’s coastal real estate problems do not appear to extend to the country’s high-end homes.
“At the top end, prices perhaps doubled in the period up to 2004 or 2005, although since then there’s been no real change. At the bottom end things are quite different: a big over-supply, very few buyers now, prices are falling,” James Stewart of Savills Real Estate told the Financial Times.Outside of high-end pockets along the coast, tourist-heavy towns have suffered due to a glut of construction and a scheme known as “off-plan,” where a buyer pledges to purchase a home before it has been built, making long-term financial stability all the more important.
The downturn on the Costa del Sol is a part of a large, continent-wide challenge, most visible in Ireland and Spain, where inflated home prices and decreasing demand for new construction have left economies reeling.

The picture of Kevin Oneil Carter was published along with a 3,000-guilder (approximately US$1,700) reward on offer to any one who provided information leading to his arrest.

Jamaican man believed to be the leader of a gang of Jamaicans committing most of the armed robberies on the island of St Maarten in recent times, was on Saturday arrested by police, about four hours after his picture was published in the press on the tiny Dutch colony in the Eastern Caribbean. Carter, 22, was arrested in a community called Cay Hill just outside the island's capital of Philipsburg on Saturday morning. Police said following the publication of his picture, the police department was flooded with calls providing them with information that led to his capture. They said that about 7:30 a.m. Carter was held and while he initially resisted being arrested, was eventually subdued. Carter's Jamaican passport describes him as a farmer from Trelawny, but according to the police in St Maarten, he was armed and dangerous and was not afraid to use violence to achieve his aimss.
In recent months, St Maarten, home to several thousand Jamaicans who make their living there, has been rocked by a wave of armed robberies. Using information gleaned from their investigations into these robberies, the police surmised that many of these robberies were being committed by criminals mainly from Jamaica.
Also in recent months, more than 15 Jamaicans were arrested in connection with these robberies. Many of the arrests were made during raids carried out by St Maarten police with the assistance of special investigators flown in from Holland to tackle the rise in armed robberies. This past weekend, as residents of the island were cleaning up following the passage of Hurricane Omar, the police carried out a raid at several locations across the island, including a popular Jamaican restaurant and bar and arrested 20 persons, 11 of them Jamaicans. It was not clear if anyone collected the reward that was offered for Carter's arrest.

Until recently British gangs had largely left the smuggling of marijuana to French-Algerian gangs, who were more likely to resort to violence.But police sources told El Mundo, that the recent spate of shootings – three in a month – appear to involve British gangs moving back on the scene.Detectives believe that the shooting in Marbella ‘by a hired hitman’ may have come about after a failure to pay for a shipment of drugs.Another source “There are two big British gangs from Manchester and Liverpool, who are muscling in on the lucrative drug trade.
“There are bound to be knock on effects.”The victim has been living in an exclusive urbanisation in Cancelada, Estepona for the last few years. His home was searched at the weekend as police tried to establish a motive for the shooting.It is the third shooting in Marbella in a month with Irish gangster Peter Mitchell shot as he sat on the terrace of El Jardin bar, in Aloha, two days before the Nikki Beach incident.
Earlier this year infamous Irish gangster Paddy Doyle was shot in Estepona.Minister for the Interior, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, said that it was thought the recent shooting was linked to a “settling of scores, probably over drugs”.Politicians are coming under increasing pressure to deal with the crime situation on the Costa del Sol. A third of all Spain’s mafia gangs have their headquarters in Malaga province and since 2006 over 100 gangs have been disbanded.A British professor recently finished a doctorate on the problem. Jennifer Sands from Leeds University said: “The area is attractive to mafia gangs because until recently the Spanish authorities did not take it seriously.”It emerged this week that two men, one English, have been arrested and remanded in custody for the shooting at Nikki Beach. In the incident three Britons were shot, one in both legs.

Neapolitan Camorra, planned a massive motorway bomb to kill the bestselling writer Roberto Saviano, the author of a big expose on their activities, as he travelled with his armed Carabinieri bodyguards. The plot, revealed by one of the Casalesi clan supergrasses, has resulted in a flurry of arrests and yesterday, asked by text message if he was OK, Saviano sent the Herald a simple, one-word return: "resisto" (meaning "I'm resisting" or "I'm still standing"). Saviano, 29, interviewed in secret in Naples in June, has lived a nomadic existence in hiding for more than two years after he wrote his blockbuster exposé of the vicious Neapolitan Mafia. The book, Gomorrah , has been turned into a movie that won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes this year and will be Italy's entry in the best foreign film category at this year's Oscars. The bomb plot was revealed by the supergrass, Carmine Schiavone, who admitted that the book's revelations had infuriated the Casalesi clan bosses and a plan to blow up Saviano and his police escorts was expected before Christmas. Schiavone has been given a new identity and lives in hiding, like Saviano, but with more than 20 armed guards to protect him. He is the cousin of the jailed Casalesi family boss, Francesco Schiavone, who has pledged to murder his relative for turning on the clan. Carmine Schiavone informed police that the plot to kill Saviano had "moved into the operational phase". The idea was to plant a roadway bomb on the motorway between Rome and Naples and to kill the young author and his bodyguards, who have become his friends and only companions. Saviano has been assigned more plain-clothes officers and is moved from house to house. Franco Roberti, the chief anti-Mafia investigatorin Naples, said the author had been under threat for some time: "We know that he is exposed to a major risk and we have placed adequate protective measures around him". It is understood that Neapolitan police are linking the plot to another piece of information provided by another informer, which suggested a Camorra fugitive, Giuseppe Setalo, was known to be searching for a large quantity of explosives.

60-year-old Stanislao Cantelli was playing cards in a social club on the high street of Casal di Principe - a satellite town and stronghold of the Camorra gangs - when someone walked in and fired 18 bullets. Paratroopers were 200 metres away. By the time the police arrived, the killer and all witnesses had fled. Shops were closing their shutters.Two days after Silvio Berlusconi, centre-right prime minister, sent 500 troops to reinforce police in the Naples area after a spate of killings, the Mafia delivered their blunt response.Police say Mr Cantelli, a retired cheese factory worker, paid the price for being the uncle of Luigi Diana, a Mafia "pentito" or turncoat whose information had led to the arrest of members of the Casalesi clan.
Two weeks earlier, suspected Casalesi hitmen shot six African immigrants in Castelvolturno, a derelict zone north of Naples trying to reinvent itself with a coastal golf course.A turf war over narcotics or golf, or simply a cocaine-driven demonstration of power by the mob? Police are not sure. Frightened immigrants protested, accusing the state of abandoning them and Italians of racism.The government's decision to deploy the army has been cautiously welcomed by Italians as a sign that the state is trying to impose an authority that has been absent for years. Critics say it is just for show.Meanwhile, the ministers of interior and defence disagree on the nature of the battle. After Mr Cantelli's murder, Roberto Maroni, the interior minister who believes he is waging a "civil war", said he had never expected "a bed of roses" and victory within hours. "But I am sure we can do it and the people of Campania (the region around Naples) will learn to trust the state," he said on television.Ignazio La Russa, the defence minister prefers the terminology of a war between gangs, but he agrees on the target. "The only war we are waging is against the Camorra," he said. An editor of a local newspaper who asked not to be named said the government had been obliged to be seen responding to the violence, but he doubted the move would would tackle its roots which is the nexus of power between local politicians and the mob."This war is win-win for Berlusconi," he said. Some local politicians "up to their necks" in the Mafia might be sacrificed but they would be replaced. Further south in Calabria, Nicola Gratteri, an anti-mafia prosecutor, was involved in co-ordinated raids last month against drug traffickers in Italy, the US, Mexico and Guatemala.More than 16 tonnes of cocaine were seized and 200 people held, including 16 suspected members of the 'Ndrangheta Mafia clans based in Calabria who control the flow of Colombian cocaine into Europe.Mr Gratteri said Colombian drug lords were outsourcing their distribution to Mexican gangs to feed the US and European markets, where in turn the 'Ndrangheta supply the Camorra around Naples.Organised as an impenetrable, cell-like structure of families, the 'Ndrangheta have grown into Europe's most powerful criminal network, controlling businesses and politicians and influencing local elections.Apart from the occasional vendetta exploding into public, the 'Ndrangheta tend to keep a lower profile than the Camorra and avoid direct confrontation with the state.Sending in the army is not an effective tool, says Mr Gratteri. "Checkpoints are not the answer. It doesn't matter whether it is the Carabinieri police or the army." To make his point, he shows where a bug was found in a store-room next to the guarded office where he and colleagues used to have what they thought were confidential conversations."The Mafia are different. They organise themselves, create their rules and also have a consensus among part of the population. Checkpoints have a good psychological effect but they do not give results."His biggest weapon is telephone intercepts. They are cheap and simple. He says the city has one of the most effective monitoring systems in the world, tapping more than 1,000 people."Investigations are the answer but to carry them out you need time, months, years," he says. "So it is important to raise the number of people employed."Contrary to checkpoints, to fight against the Mafia one must camouflage oneself, forget to exist, disappear . . not with cameras and journalists who follow you around."

Four Britons were being held on the Costa del Sol today accused of the shooting of a Liverpool man last month.Beachfront bar security boss Marvin Herbert was gunned down on September 24 at Puerto Banus, the millionaires’ yacht marina on the edge of Marbella.The 33-year-old was shot five times in the eye, the groin, pelvis, right leg and right arm.He was attacked in broad daylight by a lone gunman in front of dozens of witnesses.Herbert remains in hospital after a series of operations.
Police immediately said they believed the attack was a “settling of scores” related to drug trafficking.Puerto Banus and nearby Nueva Andalucia is a favourite hang-out for British and other international “costa crooks”.Herbert is said to have spent several hours drinking coffee alone on the terrace of Solly’s Diner in Puerto Banus before the shooting.At the time sources suggested the attack could have been revenge for the shooting of another Liverpool man in Marbella.Several other tit-for-tat shootings have taken place in the resorts in recent months.Numerous city gangsters are said to be in Spain, including some with links to murders such as that of Colin Smith, Curtis Warren’s former right-hand man shot dead in Speke last November

Kirby Archer, the Arkansas man who admitted killing four people aboard the Joe Cool charter boat on the high seas last year, on Tuesday was sentenced to life in prison -- five times. Archer, 36, was given consecutive life terms by U.S. District Judge Paul Huck during a hearing in Miami federal court. He had pleaded guilty this summer to four murder counts and one conspiracy offense to take over the vessel, resulting in the deaths. Family members and friends sobbed during the emotional proceeding.
The judge's actions marked the end of one chapter in the mystery of how four members of the Miami Beach charter boat were shot and dumped at sea on Sept. 22, 2007.
A second defendant, Guillermo Zarabozo, 20, of Hialeah, will go to trial for the second time on murder and kidnapping charges in January after the judge declared a mistrial in the first trial. Zarabozo was convicted on only four counts of providing the gun used to kill the four people. But jurors deadlocked on whether he took part in their kidnapping and murder. Prosecutors contend that Zarabozo knew his accomplice planned to hijack the Joe Cool and use it to flee to Cuba at any cost to avoid arrest in the United States. Archer did not testify at Zarabozo's trial.
Archer's sentence came as no surprise since he had already pleaded guilty in July to murder and kidnapping charges to avoid a possible death sentence. At the time, family members told The Miami Herald they were satisfied with the guilty plea by Archer but had hoped prosecutors would go to trial to get the death penalty.
Killed in the incident were Jake Branam, 27; his wife, Kelley Branam, 30; Branam's half-brother, Scott Gamble, 35; and first mate Samuel Kairy, 27, all of Miami Beach.
A former U.S. Army guard from Strawberry, Ark., Archer ended up in Miami-Dade as a fugitive on the run for stealing $92,000 from a Wal-Mart where he worked. Archer looked up friends in Hialeah he had met while stationed at the Guantanamo Naval Base and hid out for months. On Sept. 22, 2007, he and Zarabozo showed up at the Miami Beach Marina and chartered the 47-foot sport-fishing boat for a one-way trip to Bimini. They paid $4,000 in cash. Something horrible happened during the trip. The Joe Cool was found drifting empty near the Bahamas -- everyone on board had disappeared. Archer and Zarabozo were found the next day by the Coast Guard drifting away on a raft. Neither the victims' bodies nor the murder weapons were recovered. Prosecutors say the two defendants intended to go to Cuba, where Archer wanted to hide from his fugitive arrest warrant. After Zarabozo and Archer were rescued at sea, both told the Coast Guard and FBI agents that Cuban hijackers killed the charter boat crew and later let the two men go free. But Zarabozo later told investigators that Archer reached into Zarabozo's bag on board the Joe Cool and grabbed his gun to kill the four victims -- before they both dumped the bodies into the Atlantic Ocean. The government's case was viewed at first as mainly circumstantial because it lacked the victims' bodies, murder weapons or other direct evidence to link the slayings to Archer and Zarabozo. But Zarabozo's admission implicating Archer for the killings bolstered the prosecution's case -- assuming he was going to testify against his accomplice at trial.

Shooting of a motorcyclist at Wooroloo, 55km east of Perth, yesterday may be part of a dispute between rival motorcycle gangsThe man was riding his motorcyle on Great Eastern Highway at Wooroloo when he was shot about 3pm. He is under police guard at Royal Perth Hospital where he was last night reported to be in a serious but stable condition. The shooting follows information given to WA police last week police that an eastern states motorcycle gang, The Finks, was planning a move into WA.
The wounded man is believed to be a member of The Finks, and police say they were investigating possible links between the shooting and outlaw motorcycle groups.
More details are expected to be released at a police news conference today.
Police have set up a detour around the crime scene on Great Eastern Highway, which will remain closed until midday.

Four Britons have been arrested in connection with the latest shooting incident in Puerto Banús on September 24 of club security boss, Marvin Herbert, originally from Liverpool.Named by the police as 40 year old M.A.A., 62 year old K.A.A., 59 year old M.Z.S., and 40 year old M.L.K., all four are believed to have taken part in the attempted assassination. The victim was shot five times in his right eye, right leg, right arm, pelvis and genitals, and remains in hospital in a serious condition after undergoing surgery two times.The police operation in the case has now been named ‘Cristalino’ and considers the shooting to be drugs related.

Body found off the coast of Dubrovnik is that of missing Australian backpacker Britt Lapthorne.Dubrovnik deputy police commander Ivan Kukrika has told a press conference that DNA analysis had confirmed the identity of the body. “DNA analysis has been completed in the capital, Zagreb,” he said.“According to the analysis, the body found in the sea on October 6th belongs to the missing Australian Britt Lapthorne.”
Ms Lapthorne, 21, from Melbourne, was last seen at a Dubrovnik nightclub in the early hours of September 18. Dubrovnik police crime squad chief Nikola Sakic said investigations were continuing into what happened to the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) student.“We still wait for the complete results of the analysis and therefore it is too early to say about the cause of the death.”A local fisherman found the body in a cove near the town centre on Monday. Ms Lapthorne’s father Dale and brother Darren are in Dubrovnik, having travelled to the coastal tourist town in a bid to find her after she went missing. Her mother Elke stayed in Melbourne.
Croatian police had previously said the body was unlikely to be Ms Lapthorne because it was too badly decomposed. Yesterday, a detective assigned to the case from Zagreb told the family reports that the remains were those of a young female between 150 and 160 centimetres tall with blonde hair were incorrect.Ms Lapthorne was 152cm tall with blonde hair. In a similar case three years ago, Croatian police said a body found in the sea had probably been there for several months before it was confirmed to be that of murdered British backpacker Peter Rushton. Mr Rushton had vanished just five weeks earlier

man was arrested Friday as a suspect in the slaying of a Swedish couple who were found hacked to death in their home in a tourist district of the normally placid southern Caribbean island of Tobago.The suspect, 32, was detained because he resembles a man seen leaving the home of the Swedish couple before the attack, which happened Thursday, said Assistant Commissioner of Police Fitzroy Frederick.
Authorities have not charged the suspect and investigators were still collecting DNA and other evidence at the crime scene, Frederick said.
Robbery appeared to be the motive in the slaying of Anna Sundsval and Oke Olsoon at their home in the Bon Accord area, said Nadir Khan, a senior police superintendent in the twin-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago.Sundsval, 62, and Olsoon, 73, were found with multiple slash wounds. The woman died at the scene and the man at a hospital later.The couple, who had visited the island for extended periods for years, arrived in Tobago on Sunday.Trinidad, the most industrialized island in the Caribbean, has struggled with violence for years, with more than 400 homicides so far in 2008. But Tobago is considered largely crime-free, with only two others slaying this year.