Police believe they have dealt a major blow to Cosa Nostra here in the Sicilian capital with the arrest of 39 Mafia lieutenants and foot soldiers loyal to jailed boss Salvatore Lo Piccolo, the apparent heir to superboss Bernardo Provenzano.
Among those arrested was Calogero Lo Piccolo, who is believed to have taken the reins of his father's organization following his arrest last November.
Another son, Sandro, was arrested together with his father in a hideout some 15km west of Palermo last November 5.
Investigators said that many of those arrested are believed to have helped Lo Piccolo remain a fugitive for 24 years.
Commenting on the arrests, Palermo prosecutor Francesco Messineo said that ''pockets of Mafia-controlled areas still exist but Cosa Nostra's power structure is reeling''.
''We have by no means defeated Mafia, however the extortion racket here has been dealt a major blow. Nevertheless, Cosa Nostra can still regroup as it has in the past,'' he added. At the time of his arrest, Salvatore Lo Piccolo was in possession of a ledger in which he listed those from whom Cosa Nostra demanded protection money and indicated who was responsible for collecting the sums.
Police said they were able to dismantle Lo Piccolo's organization thanks to the ledger and a cache of confiscated documents, including the coded messages, known as 'pizzini', which the boss used to communicate with his underlings.
The decoding of Provenzano's 'pizzini' allowed police to launch a major offensive against Cosa Nostra last year which was capped by Lo Piccolo's arrest.
The investigators have also been aided by information provided by a growing number of Mafia turncoats.
The wealth of information gathered following Lo Piccolo's arrest has allowed police to understand how he rose to the top of the organization following Provenzano's arrest in April 2006, after 42 years on the run.
According to investigators, Lo Piccolo employed both subtle persuasion tactics, promising local bosses more power and money, as well as a brutal gangland killing to consolidate his power.
Nicolo' Ingarao, 46, a reputed boss of the central Porta Nuova district of Palermo, was gunned down last June in broad daylight minutes after he left a police station where he had signed a register for suspects under special surveillance.
At the time, Mafia experts feared his murder signaled the start of a gang war for Provenzano's empire between Lo Piccolo and his chief rival Matteo Messina Denaro, a former Porsche-driving playboy from Trapani who remains at large and is prominent in the illegal drugs trade.
Messina Denaro, 44, has been a fugitive since 1993 and investigators say he is the idol of Cosa Nostra's younger troops because of his former playboy ways and reputation for brutality, earned when he murdered a rival Trapani boss and strangled his three-months pregnant girlfriend.
