With a precautionary custody order against 19 people, almost all of Turkish origin but living in Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Turkey, the Milan Prosecutor’s Office has dismantled a criminal network led by the alleged Turkish mafia boss Baris Boyun, one of Ankara’s most wanted men. The charges contested, for various reasons, are criminal association aggravated by transnationality, armed gang aimed at establishing an association with terrorist purposes and committing terrorist attacks, illegal possession and carrying of “deadly” weapons and explosives, international drug trafficking, murder and aiding and abetting illegal immigration.
The measure by the Milanese investigating judge Roberto Crepaldi was carried out at dawn, together with a couple of arrests, by hundreds of police coordinated by the Milanese anti-terrorism department, in particular by the prosecutor Bruna Albertini and the prosecutor Marcello Viola. At 4 this morning a joint task force of Italian law enforcement agencies and Interpol raided an apartment in via Cardinal G. Francesco di Gambara in the Viterbo hamlet of Bagnaia, where Boyun, who appears to have been under house arrest for some time, was guarded around 5.30 he was taken away by officers to presumably be taken to Milan.
Boyun was arrested in August 2022 in Rimini, following an international arrest warrant issued against him by the Turkish government on charges of murder, threats, injuries, criminal conspiracy and violation of the law on possession of weapons. At the time of his arrest, Boyun had strongly rejected the accusations, claiming that he was a politically persecuted person of Kurdish origins, and that he had already requested international protection from Italy.
Subsequently, the alleged boss was at the center of disputes between the Italian and Turkish states, which had requested his extradition. A request that had been rejected first by the Bologna court and later by the Court of Cassation. The raid in Bagnaia is part of a major operation conducted this night by the Police, which led to the arrest of around 18 people between Sicily and the province of Viterbo.
The investigation began in October 2023 after the arrest of three members of the organization while they were trying to reach Switzerland: they were in possession of two guns, one of which was illegal, ammunition and propaganda material. Subsequent investigations revealed that the three were escorting their boss, Boyun, 39, and his partner, who were traveling in a separate car. The couple is also the recipient of the provision of investigating judge Crepaldi.
The investigators of the Flying Squad of Como, of the investigative section of Milan and of the SCO of Rome, led by the Prosecutor’s Office, documented how Boyun, from a house in Crotone where he was under house arrest with an electronic bracelet for possession and possession of a common firearm , continued to direct and coordinate his network operating in Europe from Italy.
They range from the organization of the entry of migrants, against tariffs, through the Balkan route, to the order for the murder of one of his fellow citizens which occurred on 10 March, up to the obligation for his associates to commit crimes, including terrorist ones, in Europe , especially in Berlin. In Turkey, however, he would have been the “mastermind” of the attack, later foiled thanks to the exchange of information between the Italian and Turkish police, at an aluminum factory on 19/20 March last, thus showing that he had weapons with a high firepower and a lot of money coming mostly from the trafficking of narcotic substances, but also from the smuggling of cigarettes and drugs.
Given the significant flows of money for the association’s activities, the Terrorism Financing Investigation Section of the Gdf of Milan also collaborated in the investigation. The operation, still ongoing, is involving hundreds of policemen between Switzerland and Italy, including personnel from the Flying Squad of Como, the SCO of Rome, the SCO Investigation Section of Milan and Brescia, the Flying Squads of Catania, Crotone, Verona and Viterbo.
Milan prosecutor: ‘No attack planned in Italy by Boyun’
“No planned attacks have emerged in Italy or even against our institutions.” This was said at a press conference by the new deputy prosecutor of Milan Bruna Albertini, head of the investigation that led to the arrest of the alleged Turkish mafia boss Baris Boyun and part of the members of the network. The prosecutor, who is part of the Milanese Ddda, explained that Boyun in “Italy felt protected as the arrest warrant from Turkey had not been endorsed” by the Bologna judiciary. The attacks that emerged from the investigation concern an aluminum factory in Turkey, which was later foiled, a well-known restaurant and a jewelery shop in Istanbul. Boyun, when he was under house arrest in Crotone, was the subject of an attack organized by the rival criminal group.
Turkish mafia boss, ‘we will replace the PKK for the revolution’
The ‘political’ aspect of the ‘fight’ of Baris Boyun, 39 years old, of Kurdish origin and ‘leader’ of the Turkish armed gang dismantled with this morning’s operation by the Police and Gdf, emerges from an intercepted conversation on 16 January in which announced that it had ‘sent news to the upper hierarchy of the PKK’, the Kurdish paramilitary organisation.
‘I said that we do not accept an organization like this – he said – and that we will found a new organization and start a new revolution’. Boyun, recipient like 18 others of a prison custody order signed by the Milan investigating judge Roberto Crepaldi in the investigation coordinated by prosecutor Bruna Albertini, was ‘continuing from Italy’, where he believed ‘he had found protection’, ‘together with the his men, a war to gain supremacy over other criminal groups who have infested, in his opinion, the Turkish state, a fight which evidently does not only involve the criminal aspect but also the institutional one, accused of supporting and favoring other organisations’.
The aim ‘of the group led by Boyun’, writes the investigating judge, was not limited to an ‘armed struggle’ between clans ‘for the control of the territory and criminal dynamics (trafficking of drugs, weapons and migrants), as often noted in the past in the Italian context between rival mafia associations, but takes on a truly terrorist nature.
The attacks, the murders, the knee-killings are certainly functional to impose oneself over other criminal groups – explains the investigating judge – but also to break the existing link, again from Boyun’s perspective, between these and the State, directing the behavior of the institutions and evidently replacing those bonds’. And ‘destabilisation’ also comes, the judge summarizes, ‘from imposing terror on the population’.
Turkish mafia boss, ‘all Turkey will talk about my attack’
‘Give me a week, I’m doing great preparations, all of Turkey will be talking about it’. Thus, intercepted while he was under house arrest in Crotone, Baris Boyun, 39 years old, the “leader” of the Turkish “armed gang” also active in Italy and other European countries, was planning an “attack” on an “aluminium” factory in Turkey, even through a “kamikaze”. Terrorist attack foiled thanks to ‘the intervention of the Turkish police’ alerted by Italian investigators.
This can be read in the precautionary custody order in prison for 19 people, including Boyun himself, known as “the big brother”, signed by the investigating judge of Milan Roberto Crepaldi, at the request of the prosecutor Bruna Albertini.
‘Boyun’s incessant number of phone calls allows us to practically follow the preparations for the attack live’, writes the investigating judge. From the ‘establishment of the fire group’ to the ‘inspections of the factory via drone’ up to the ‘human bomb’ hypothesis.
Boyun, last March, said: ‘Are you ready, guys? good luck in battle! raze that factory to the ground. The Italian Police, however, ‘had taken steps to inform the Turkish authorities who sent numerous patrols to the scene, preventing the attack on the factory and on Burhanettin Saral’, the owner and exponent of a criminal group ‘rival’ to that of Boyun.
Saral was also judged by Boyun ‘responsible’ for an ‘attack’ against him. The ‘direct target of the attack’ on the factory, explains the investigating judge, was ‘Saral himself, but the intention of Boyun and his men’ was, however, ‘to interfere with the existing status quo in Turkey’.
Boyun wanted ‘to undermine the group currently in power, which corrupts the state and considers him as a ‘fourth category’ criminal. And precisely to ‘demonstrate one’s power to the Turkish political power, for Boyun it is indifferent whether one actually manages to kill his rival or not: ‘if this deal is not successful, believe me – he said when intercepted – we will make the eyes of the State focus on them and then we will scare them”..
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