Police Arrest Mafia Boss With Ties to Duisburg Massacre
August 7, 2008
After a short chase on foot, police blocked 31-year-old Paolo Nirta down a narrow alley of San Luca, a town considered the stronghold of the Calabrian version of the mafia, the 'Ndrangheta.
Nirta is the suspected acting-boss of the Nirta family, which has been locked in a bloody feud with a rival clan, the Pelle-Vottari family, since the early 1990s. Investigators who believe that the mob-style shootings in Duisburg a year ago were linked to the feud have named Nirta's brother-in-law, Giovanni Strangio, as one of the suspected killers.
Paolo Nirta is also the brother of another of the Nirta clan's bosses, Giovanni Luca Nirta whose wife Maria was killed in a 2006 Christmas-day shooting which triggered the feud with the Pelle-Vottari clan.
Giovanni Luca Nirta was arrested weeks after the so-called "Duisburg massacre," while the father of the two brothers, Giuseppe, the crime-family patriarch, was arrested in May in one of a recent series of successful police operations against the 'Ndrangheta.