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Mafia accused of trafficking in nuclear waste

Rome: Authorities in Italy are investigating a mafia clan accused of trafficking nuclear waste and trying to make plutonium.

The ’Ndrangheta mafia, which gained notoriety in August for its blood feud killings of six men in Germany, is alleged to have made illegal shipments of radioactive waste to Somalia, as well as seeking the “clandestine production” of other nuclear material.

Two of the Calabrian clan’s members are being investigated, along with eight former employees of the state energy research agency Enea.

The eight are suspected of paying the mobsters to take waste off their hands in the 1980s and 1990s.

An Enea manager is said to have paid the clan to get rid of 600 drums of toxic and radioactive waste from Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany, and the U.S., the turncoat claimed, with Somalia as the destination lined up by the traffickers.

But with only room for 500 drums on a ship waiting at the northern port of Livorno, 100 drums were secretly buried somewhere in the southern Italian region of Basilicata.

Clan members avoided burying the waste in neighbouring Calabria, said the turncoat, because of their “love for their home region”, and because they already had too many kidnap victims hidden in grottoes there.

Investigators have yet to locate the radioactive drums allegedly buried in Basilicata - although, in a parallel investigation, police are searching for drums of non-radioactive toxic waste they believe were dumped by the ’Ndrangheta near the Unesco town of Matera in Basilicata.

Shipments to Somalia, where the waste was buried after buying off local politicians, continued into the 1990s, while the mob also became adept at blowing up shiploads of waste, including radioactive hospital waste, and sending them to the sea bed off the Calabrian coast, the turncoat told investigators.

Although he made no mention of attempted plutonium production, Il Giornale newspaper wrote that the mobsters may have planned to sell it to foreign governments. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

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