Mafia suspect arrested in Netherlands: prosecutors



THE HAGUE- A member of a notorious Italian crime syndicate, sentenced in his homeland to life imprisonment for murder, has been arrested in the Netherlands, Dutch prosecutors said Friday.
The 29-year-old man, Gianluca Racco, was arrested Thursday in Aalsmeer in the west of the country.
According to Italy's ANSA news agency, He is listed as one of Italy's 100 most wanted fugitives. Citing sources among Italy's caribinieri, it said he was linked to the Commisso di Siderno mafia family.



He had "probably been hiding for some time in the Netherlands" and was living in the town of Hoofddorp, the prosecution office said in a statement.
Racco had been the subject of an international arrest warrant since 2004, following his sentence in Italy for murder, attempted murder and membership of a mafia crime organisation, prosecutors said.
The Italian courts have submitted a request for his extradition, said Dutch prosecutors.
Racco is the third member of the 'Ndrangheta, considered to be among the most violent Mafia organisations, to be arrested in the Netherlands in the past nine months.
In March, Dutch police arrested Giovanni Strangio, a key suspect of a deadly 2007 shooting in Germany in which six people were killed, at a town near Amsterdam. He was extradited Italy in May.
His brother-in-law was arrested in November in Amsterdam. He had been sentenced in absentia in Italy to nearly 15 years in prison for drug trafficking.
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Saturday, August 22nd 2009
AFP
           


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