Portugal Colonial - Six arrested for murder of notorious Inter Milan ultra

Vittorio Boiocchi, considered one of the historic leaders of Inter's ultras and a career criminal, was gunned down near his home on the outskirts of Milan in October 2022, at the age of 69.

Police said that the six people were the "promotors, instigators and executors" of Boiocchi's murder, which was related to the struggle for control of the Inter ultras' allegedly lucrative matchday activities.

Two men aged 41 and 30 suspected of carrying out the hit, confirmed to AFP as being Pietro Andrea Simoncini and Daniel D'Alessandro, were arrested respectively in the southern Italian region of Calabria and in Bulgaria.

Simoncini was described to AFP as being close to an 'Ndrangheta mafia family from Vibo Valentia in Calabria.

The four people considered to be behind Boiocchi's murder were all already in prison after being previously incarcerated in September, when 19 Inter and AC Milan ultras were arrested for organised crime offences.

One of those four is Andrea Beretta, who stepped up to take over the "Curva Nord" section of the San Siro from Boiocchi but turned state's witness after being jailed for killing another top ultra and mobster Antonio Bellocco.

Beretta stabbed Bellocco, a scion of an 'Ndrangheta family which bears his surname, to death during an altercation outside a boxing gym in a Milan suburb weeks before the mass arrests of leading Inter and Milan ultras.

- Blood & betrayal -

Milan's public prosecutor's office said Friday's arrests came in part thanks to testimony from Beretta, who took control of the Inter ultras alongside Marco Ferdico and Bellocco.

Ferdico, his father Gianfranco Ferdico, and another Inter ultra Cristian Ferrario were confirmed to AFP as being the other three suspected organisers of the hit.

Friday's arrests were the latest episode in a bloody saga which has rocked Italian football and exposed serious criminality among the hardcore supporters of Inter and Milan.

Two separate trials -- one a fast-track procedure -- are ongoing for alleged crimes involving illicit operations around the San Siro, from ticket touting to control of parking and sales from concession stands.

The Inter ultras on trial are charged with criminal conspiracy aggravated by mafia methods, a charge usually reserved for the country's most powerful criminal organisations.

Prosecutors accuse Beretta and Ferdico of using Bellocco's 'Ndrangheta connections to push aside more traditional football hooligans, linked with far-right politics, who were bidding for top billing among the ultras.

Boiocchi, who was killed hours before an Inter home fixture with Sampdoria, had a criminal record stretching back to the mid-1970s and was in fact banned from attending Inter matches.

He had been sentenced in the 1990s to more than two decades in prison for drug trafficking and was a well-known figure in Milan's criminal underworld.

C.Cassis--PC