(ANSA) - Raffaele Cutolo, who during the 1970s and early '80s organized The Naples Camorra into a major crime syndicate, has asked Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi for a pardon.
According to the Il Mattino daily here on Wednesday, the 64-year-old mobster sent a handwritten letter to the president three days ago saying: "I'm tired and sick. I want to spend my final years at home."
Cutolo is currently serving seven life sentences and has spent two-thirds of his life, a total of 42 years, behind bars. In an interview published in Il Mattino, Cutolo's wife Immacolata, whom he married while in jail, said: "After 42 years in jail he deserves a pardon. He made mistakes and he has paid for them. Today he is not the head of any organization, he's only a sick man who needs the care and affection of his family."
Cutolo once told an Italian weekly that "I don't regret anything I've done in my life. I know crime is always wrong, but we live in a society which is more wrong than crime itself." During his long years in prison, Cutolo has earned the nickname O'Professore (the Professor) for having educated himself through extensive reading.
He has also prided himself in being somewhat of a philosopher and once said: "It's better to be a madman than a dreamer. A madman can always recover his sanity, whereas all a dreamer can do is cut off his head." The mobster is also a poet who in 1980 published a volume of verse, entitled Poems and Thoughts, and the next year won a prize for a poem on the hardships of prison life.
Cutolo's climb to the top of the Camorra began after his 1963 arrest in his home town of Ottaviano, on the slopes of Mt Vesuvius, and ended in the early 1980s when his Nuova Camorra Organizzata, the New Organized Camorra (NCO), was defeated by the Nuova Famiglia (New Family) after a long and bloody feud.
Working mostly from prison, Cutolo created the NCO by uniting in a military-type structure the various gangs which had been fighting among themselves for control over drugs, prostitution, racketeering, gambling and loan sharking in the Naples area.
The NCO reached its height after the 1980 earthquake in the Irpinia region when, thanks to Cutolo's alleged political connections, it was able to win lucrative reconstruction contracts. Many believe the contracts were payback for Cutolo's
efforts to win the release of Christian Democrat politician Ciro Cirillo, a regional councillor who was kidnapped by the Red Brigades in 1981.
The earthquake contracts eventually led to the NCO's downfall because the 'old' families became jealous and joined together as the Nuova Famiglia to bring down Cutolo's empire.
