(ANSA) - A slain Calabrian politician urged his region's youth to help fight the Mafia shortly before he was killed, it emerged on Thursday. Francesco Fortugno said Calabria's young people were the future of the Mafia-plagued region and its hope for renewal.
The speech, delivered to a youth audience a month before his death, was published by the Europa newsweekly on Thursday.
Fortugno, who was killed in a Mafia-style execution on October 16, said today's politicians must work to "involve young people directly in politics. You can't be disillusioned because you must become the competent, able and above all 'clean' administrators we need in future," Fortugno said, admitting that Calabrian politics had been infiltrated by the mob.
Fortugno, deputy chairman of the regional 'parliament', was gunned down on October 16 as he voted in centre-left primary elections in the town of Locri.
The slaying shocked the nation and fuelled fears that the Calabrian Mafia had become even more powerful and dangerous than the Sicilian Mafia.
The government subsequently announced an offensive against the crime syndicate, known as the 'Ndrangheta, which
earns billions of euros a year from the drug trade and buys off local politicians.
Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu appointed one of the nation's top police officers to oversee anti-Mafia operations in the region. Italy's deputy police chief Luigi De Sena was appointed prefect of Reggio Calabria with special powers.
De Sena has long experience in fighting organised crime and has recently been the main architect of the government's strategy against the Calabrian mob. The cabinet also approved a six-pronged plan of action against the powerful crime syndicate including stepping up territorial surveillance and intelligence activity in the region, protecting local government officials more
effectively and weakening the organisation's economic power through asset seizures.
"This is not a temporary response," said Pisanu. "It is ambitious, regards the whole of Calabria and is destined to last a long time."
"The fight won't be short or easy," he added.
