Messina – Eight hundred carabinieri from all over Sicily, including the Cacciatori (the helicopter units), the dog squads and the “burglary” specialists of the force. It is a real show of strength that the Sicilian military wanted to give with today’s 112 arrests. “To make people understand – explains Lieutenant Colonel Marco Carletti, who leads the provincial command of Messina – that the Carabinieri enter everywhere and there is no fortress that can stop them”.
The two gangs of traffickers and drug dealers discovered by the Carabinieri actually used fort houses where they hid drugs and dealt, located between Giostra and the Cep Village. “We discovered houses equipped with sophisticated video surveillance systems that recorded both the main entrances and all the windows and other openings, double gates and other security systems”, confirms the deputy prosecutor Rosa Raffa.
The armored door at the pusher’s house and the injured policeman
It was precisely the break-in into one of these homes in 2020 that triggered the trigger the investigation. It’s the one at Ivan’s Cep The Cascioarrested in big blitz. For days the Carabinieri had suspected that drugs were being dealt there and, after having been stationed for a few days and having monitored the intense coming and going of buyers, the raid finally began. When the military knocks on the door Lo Cascior opens, convinced it is another customer. At the sight of the men in uniform he quickly closes again, slamming the very heavy armored door on a soldier, who gets badly hurt. Only 20 minutes later Lo Cascio finally lets them in and in those 20 minutes there is no way for the Carabinieri to understand what was happening inside or to be able to enter the apartment. Precisely by investigating Lo Cascio the Carabinieri trace the organization of suppliers behind him, arriving at the Anzalones and the Castorinos.
The Milanese fortress house
But also to Milanese, or Domenico Milanese, another client of Abate and the Castorinos. He is the repentant Seventh Runner who speaks to Milanese investigators at the end of 2023, indicating him as the manager of an autonomous drug dealing square and revealing that his is also a house – fortress: hidden from view by a system of gates, with the walls marked by hidden cavities where hashish, marijuana but also cocaine are hidden inside.
