CNN —The discovery of a severed horse head, and a cow quartered with its bloodied dead calf on top, have rattled a Sicilian town, with authorities treating the incident as a mafia threat. “I can’t comprehend such barbarity,” she told local media outlets. It is a tactic that has been used by the notorious Sicilian Cosa Nostra crime syndicate for decades. Organized crime in Sicily has been a problem since the 19th century when the Cosa Nostra was first identified. In 2023, Matteo Messina Denaro, a Sicilan Cosa Nostra mafia boss who had been on the run for 30 years was captured while seeking cancer treatment in Palermo, underscoring the level of complicity that continues to protect and enable criminal enterprises.

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Persons: Mafia Directorate’s, Maurizio de Lucia, “, ”, Angela De Lucia, Paolo Borsellino, Giovanni Falcone, Tony Gentile, Ndrangheta, Matteo Messina Denaro Organizations: CNN, Mafia, Nostra, Cosa Nostra, Reuters Locations: Altofonte, Palermo, Sicily, Sicilian, Cosa