Brescia – A heavy sentence, which puts an end to a complex and disturbing criminal conspiracy hatched along the Naples-Brescia axis. The preliminary hearing judge of the Brescia Court has sentenced six people (five men and one woman) to terms ranging from four to eight years in prison for the attempted murder of Domenico Amato, a former justice collaborator living in the Brescia area.

Five of them were fully charged with the aggravating circumstance of mafia facilitation: the elimination of the target would have marked the reassertion of the Sarno Camorra clan in the eastern neighborhoods of Naples. A seventh defendant, at the top of the clan, instead chose the ordinary trial.

The fire trap in Urago Mella

The entire legal case began in October 2022, in the Urago Mella neighborhood of Brescia. The alarm was raised following the fire in a Mercedes owned by Domenico Amato, who was then under special protection in Lombardy. It wasn't a simple act of vandalism, but a deadly decoy: a slow-burning trigger on a tire, designed by the commando to force the man onto the street, where the killers were already positioned to open fire. Amato, however, sensed the danger: he didn't fall for the trap and remained safe at home, simply observing his burning car.

The timely intervention of the firefighters and law enforcement officers forced the gunmen to flee. The blaze sparked an investigation by the Brescia District Anti-Mafia Directorate (DDA), led by public prosecutors Donato Greco and Francesco Carlo Milanesi, in close collaboration with the Brescia and Naples DIA (Italian Anti-Mafia Investigation Department).

The worm of revenge: the Ponticelli crimes

The man behind the ambush, as reconstructed by the Prosecutor's Office, was former mafia boss Vincenzo Sarno, a former top figure in the Ponticelli clan of the same name. Sarno, despite his status as a cooperating witness, had been harboring an obsessive desire for years: to avenge the killings of his brother Giovanni Sarno (killed in his sleep on March 6, 2016, on Via Camillo de Meis in Ponticelli) and his brother-in-law Mario Volpicelli, killed just two months earlier in the same Neapolitan neighborhood.

A cold-blooded revenge. To carry it out, Sarno was the target of an arrest warrant along with two alleged accomplices and affiliates of the Neapolitan Camorra cartels: Ciro De Magistris (believed to be close to the powerful Contini clan) and Antonio Verterame. The investigation, which has ten other suspects under investigation, revealed how the boss had actively recruited associates and amassed a veritable arsenal.

The weapons of the 'Ndrangheta and the super-rifle

The network of "fake informants" was exposed by the statements of another cooperating witness, Ciro Borriello. He was the one who told Brescia magistrates about Vincenzo Sarno's bloodlust and his supply routes. The DIA investigations documented Sarno's very close contacts with members close to the powerful Arena 'Ndrangheta clan of Isola Capo Rizzuto. It was thanks to these Calabrians that the former boss from Campania had managed to procure the weapons needed for his family feud.

During the investigation, investigators had already made three arrests in flagrante delicto. Among them was a third former justice collaborator, apprehended immediately after purchasing a deadly Remington Model 700 .308 caliber sniper rifle on the black market, complete with scope and ammunition (obtained from a home burglary). This sniper weapon was allegedly used to eliminate a prominent member of the Sarno clan who remained in Naples, an internal execution that would have sparked a new Camorra war. Around the same time, the DIA had seized two Beretta pistols (.22 short and 6.35 caliber) with their serial numbers removed from two other accomplices.

The paradox of protection programs

The verdict of the Brescia preliminary hearing judge sheds light on an alarming scenario: all the alleged crimes were committed by the defendants after their respective periods of collaboration with the state. Many of the individuals involved in Vincenzo Sarno's logistics network had been transferred to the Brescia area precisely because of protection measures. Once they left the program, they exploited their roots in Lombardy not to rebuild their lives, but to transform the province of Brescia into a secure operating base from which to plan crimes, exchange weapons with Calabria, and orchestrate the bloody return to power in the Ponticelli neighborhood of Naples.