THE MAFIA

Evening Star, Issue 19773, 25 January 1928, Page 5

THE MAFIA

2,000 MEMBERS WAITING TRIAL END OE SICILIAN BANDIT GANG. Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, January 24. (Received January 25, at 9.10 a.m.) The ‘ Daily Mail’s ’ Rome correspondent states that since the sentences evidence has poured in against other members of the Mafia, and arrests are made daily. Two - thousand members are awaiting trial, causing the disappearance of one of the most impudent, picturesque, and deadliest gangs of cutthroats throughout the world; which was responsible for four centuries’ terrorism. The crimes in 1923 included 700 murders, 1,200 robberies _ with violence, 200 cases of incendiarism, _ 3,000 of blackmail, and 700 of cattle-maiming, chiefly against land-owners for refusing to pay contributions. —Sydney ‘Sun’ Cable.

[A previous message received' on January 11 stated;—The Mafia, the notorious Sicilian secret society, has at last been brought to judgment by the jury’s verdict after the three months’ trial of 154 members. The prosecutor demanded that seven of the accused should be sentenced to penal servitude for life, eight others to thirty years, and the remainder to between five and twenty-five years. Efforts to suppress the Mafia, which has terrorised Sicily by murder, robbery, and smuggling, have been recorded as far back as 1874.]