Three aides of Mafia superboss Bernardo Provenzano were arrested on Wednesday, a day after the elderly mob chieftain was caught in a farmhouse close to his home town Corleone.
The three are suspected of acting as 'postmen' for the boss, who communicated with Sicily's Mafia bosses using notes during the latter part of his 43 years in hiding. Police are sifting through notes and letters found at the farmhouse and said they expected to make more arrests shortly.
Many of the notes concern public works contracts across the island.
"We found the names of some people who have never before appeared in our investigations," a police officer said.
A crime-scene investigation unit arrived at the farmhouse from Rome on Wednesday to comb the building for fingerprints and other evidence. The three arrests followed that on Tuesday of a noted local sheepfarmer and cheese-maker who owned the building where Provenzano was holed up.
The three included another sheep farmer and a Corleone man who worked in a vacuum cleaner store with Provenzano's son. Also arrested was the man's father.
Provenzano, 73, is believed to have had a close support network in the town 40km (25 miles) south of Palermo - as well as protection from local politicians and rogue police officers.
The boss, who took sole command of Cosa Nostra when his co-boss Toto' Riina was arrested 13 years ago, was moved to a high-security prison in Terni, central Italy on Wednesday. He has been convicted in absentia of a string of murders he committed as a young hitman and more recent assassinations he approved including the 1992 bomb slayings of Italy's top anti-Mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.
