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2009-10-16T23:10:00.000-07:00

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E N J O Y...

Handgun

2009-08-01T06:09:00.000-07:00

Handgun,
small close-range firearm that, unlike other small arms, is intended to be fired with one hand.

Three varieties of handguns are available: single-shot, multiple-barrel repeating, and single-barrel repeating.

Handguns, or pistols, as they are also known, were not popular until after the development of the wheel lock, the first practical mechanical ignition device, in the first half of the 16th century.

Most early handguns were too cumbersome to be carried in a holster by anyone on foot, and the short barrels limited their accuracy and the distance they could propel bullets.

As a result, handguns were primarily used by cavalry troops in what amounted to hit-and-run tactics.

As ignition systems were improved, it became possible to reduce the overall size and weight of handguns, until during the 18th century they became equally popular for use by foot soldiers.

From the last half of the 17th century to the first quarter of the 19th century, most European and United States military handguns had flintlock ignition (see Small Arms) and barrels 23 to 30 cm (9 to 12 in) in length; smaller pocket handguns were also made for civilian use.

No significant improvements were made, however, until after 1836, when the American inventor Samuel Colt patented a revolver design combining the metal percussion cap (which replaced the flintlock), interchangeable mass-produced parts, and the revolving cylinder, which rotated and locked automatically when the hammer was cocked.

Improvements in ammunition were introduced with the development of the self-primed metallic cartridge in the mid-19th century.

Minor improvements in revolver design continued until the beginning of the 20th century, when emphasis in development was redirected to the magazine-loaded semiautomatic handgun.

Since then, the semiautomatic has steadily gained in popularity and is now the primary military handgun of the world. It is gradually replacing the revolver for police use.

Modern semiautomatic handguns carry two or three times more ammunition than revolvers and are faster to reload.

Their flat configuration generally makes them easier to conceal. Even with the increased ammunition capacity, using newly developed lightweight materials makes their loaded weight about the same as that of older designs.

Proponents of revolvers claim greater accuracy, reliability, and safety, however, so it is unlikely that semiautomatics will totally replace revolvers.

In fact, muzzle-loading pistols and revolvers continue to be used for sport and specialized worldwide competition.

Handguns are widespread in some countries of the world.

M16 Automatic Rifle

2009-08-01T06:07:00.000-07:00

M16 Automatic Rifle
Commonly referred to as a machine gun, the American M16 is more properly called an automatic rifle.

The M16 can fire automatically like a machine gun, and it uses the same size ammunition (5.56-mm) as some light machine guns. However, the M16 fires ammunition from a small magazine holding 20 or 30 individual rounds.

Machine guns fire ammunition linked together in long belts.

Sporting Rifle

2009-08-01T06:03:00.000-07:00

Sporting Rifle

As a bullet is fired from a rifle, grooves in the interior of the barrel cause it to spin.

The spinning motion stabilizes the bullet and increases its distance and accuracy. This illustration shows a modern hunting rifle and highlights its main components.

Rifle

2009-08-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

Rifle,
any firearm having the interior of its barrel rifled, that is, engraved with spiral grooves so as to give spin to a projectile as it is fired.

The term rifle is most generally applied to a military or sporting weapon fired from the shoulder. The spin, by gyroscopic action, stabilizes the projectile in flight, keeping its long axis parallel with the line of flight and thereby greatly increasing its range and accuracy. The slope of the rifling, that is, the degree of twist, is given in number of calibers, or diameters, per turn; for example, a 15.2-cm (6-in) naval rifle with a rifling of one turn in 30 calibers has rifling that makes possible one complete turn of the bullet in each 4.6 m (15 ft).

The slope of the rifling is carefully calculated to give the right amount of spin for the projectile. If the spin is too low, the projectile tends to tumble through the air; if it is too high, the projectile tends to nose up, instead of remaining parallel to the trajectory. Either condition causes a loss of range and accuracy.

The first mention of the use of rifled small arms is found in an edict of the Swiss government issued in 1563. The first such weapons were crude and were of little value when used with the spherical bullets and cannonballs of the time.

About the beginning of the 19th century, breech-loading weapons firing elongated projectiles were introduced. During the first half of the century, rifled weapons were adopted for both artillery and small arms by all major nations.

Colt .45 Semiautomatic

2009-08-01T05:57:00.000-07:00

Colt .45 Semiautomatic
The Colt .45 semiautomatic is the most famous single-action semiautomatic pistol.

First adopted in 1911, it was the standard handgun of the United States armed forces until the mid-1980s.
THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE

Luger Pistol

2009-08-01T05:54:00.000-07:00

Luger Pistol
The 9-mm, German-made Luger pistol, used by the German Army as well as other European armies, was a popular weapon in both World War I and World War II.
Culver Pictures

Colt Revolver

2009-08-01T05:51:00.000-07:00

The Colt revolver became a popular United States Army handgun when General Zachary Taylor ordered one thousand revolvers at the outbreak of the Mexican War in the late 1840s.

Colt handguns were used by the army through World War I (1914-1918).
Dan Guravich/Photo Researchers, Inc.

flintlock pistol

2009-08-01T05:49:00.000-07:00

The flintlock pistol was the first practical pistol because its flintlock ignition made it much lighter and less bulky than its predecessor, the wheel lock pistol.
Sid Latham/Photo Researchers, Inc.

Colt Walker

2009-08-01T05:44:00.000-07:00

The Colt Walker is named for Captain Sam Walker of the Texas Rangers, who helped design the revolver.

The original Walker is the rarest and most valuable of the Colt Paterson revolvers; it is not certain whether this model was ever produced commercially.

AL CAPONE CONVICTED ( IV )

2009-07-22T10:17:00.000-07:00

CHARGE SATISFACTORY

Judge Wilkerson took an hour and ten minutes in reading his instructions to the jury. He made no comment on the evidence, but told the jurors how the law may be applied to the various evidential branches of the case.

At the close of his charge the government counsel had no suggestions to make or exceptions to the charge.

Defense Counsel Fink said the charge was “absolutely perfect” outside of the court's definition of the corpus delicti in the case.

This had been a legal question over which long arguments had been heard on other days, and one in which the court had ruled against Fink.

Source: Los Angeles Times, October 18, 1931.

AL CAPONE CONVICTED ( III )

2009-07-22T10:16:00.000-07:00

TYPICAL VERDICTS

“I have had prepared by the clerk certain forms of verdict in this case: one to be used in case the defendant is found not guilty; one in case he is guilty; one in case he is found guilty on certain counts; guilty in one indictment and not guilty in the others; guilty on certain counts of one indictment and not guilty in another, and so forth.”

This probably explains the delay in the jury room, as the defense made a strong plea along these lines and argued that no evidence had been shown of a taxable income for the year 1924 and that during 1929 Capone was in prison.

The felony counts carry a maximum penalty of five years in the penitentiary and a fine of $10,000 on each count.

If Capone is found guilty on one or two counts of the twenty-three he still faces a long period in prison.

AL CAPONE CONVICTED ( II )

2009-07-22T10:15:00.000-07:00

CAPONE FEELS BETTER

Judge Wilkerson remained in his chambers until late tonight. U. S. Dist.-Atty. Johnson and his staff also waited.

They had expected an early verdict.

Capone went to the offices of his lawyer, Michael Ahern, where it was said he was feeling more cheerful as a result of the delay.

His lawyers had expected the worst for their client and had pinned their hopes of eventual escape for him on the appeal to the higher courts.

If found guilty on all the counts in the consolidated indictments Capone faces a possible maximum sentence of fifty-seven years in the penitentiary and a maximum fine of $130,000.

He pleaded guilty once to the charge of evading the income-tax payments for the period charged, from 1924 to 1929, but when Judge Wilkerson refused to bargain with him and give him a light sentence the plea was withdrawn and he went to trial.

The case represents three years' work by several departments of the government, starting with the intelligence unit, then the internal revenue men and finally the District Attorney and his staff.

Capone has other troubles with the government, even if he escapes this one. He is under a six months' sentence for contempt of court, a decision of Judge Wilkerson which is on appeal.

The Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to give a decision on this next month. In still another case he is under indictment for violation of the Volstead Act in 5000 separate counts. This is a conspiracy indictment which includes the bulk of the Capone organization. The government is expected to press this for trial.

In the income-tax case Judge Wilkerson outlined to the jury various forms of verdict, explaining this as follows

AL CAPONE CONVICTED ( I )

2009-07-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

Verdict Follows Long Debate
Los Angeles Times
October 18, 1931

The Los Angeles Times published this article about the trial of notorious Chicago gangster Al Capone.

The late-breaking news of Capone's conviction on income tax evasion accompanies an earlier article providing background on the court proceedings and the charges against him.

Chicago, Oct. 17. (Exclusive)—A jury in Federal Judge James Wilkerson's court late tonight found Alphonse Capone, gang leader, guilty of income tax evasion on five counts.

Chicago, Oct. 17. (Exclusive)—Chicago waited tonight for a jury verdict in the Al Capone income tax case.

After retiring to their room with instructions from Federal Judge Wilkerson at 2:43 p.m., eight hours have passed without any indication that a decision had been reached.

The jurors went without dinner in their effort to complete the task which the court had set for them, that of untangling the evidence in the two weeks' trial of Chicago's gangland chief, and applying it to the twenty-three counts in the indictments returned against him.

Discussion and laughter were heard at times and evidently it is not a deadlock but a dispute over the finding in various counts that is delaying the decision

Al Capone ( III )

2009-07-22T10:11:00.000-07:00

DOWNFALL

Although Capone was a well-known gangster, he had stayed out of the reach of the law and defeated several murder charges.

The law finally caught up with him in 1931, when Capone was convicted of income tax evasion.

He was sentenced to 11 years in prison and spent part of the time at the high-security facility on Alcatraz island, but he was released on parole in 1939.

Crippled by syphilis, he spent the rest of his life in Miami, Florida. He died in Miami on January 26, 1947.

Al Capone ( II )

2009-07-22T10:10:00.000-07:00

CONSOLIDATES POWER

When Torrio retired in 1925, Capone took over his organization.

In the following years, Capone consolidated his control over organized crime in Chicago by eliminating his competitors one by one in a series of gang wars.

The most notorious slaying was the 1929 Saint Valentine’s Day massacre, in which Capone’s gunmen, dressed as policemen, lined up seven members of the rival Bugs Moran gang and cut them down with machine guns.

After the massacre, Capone had won control of Chicago’s underworld. Running most of Chicago’s large-scale criminal activities, Capone built a fortune worth millions of dollars.

Al Capone ( I )

2009-07-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

Al Capone (1899-1947), American notorious crime overlord and gang leader of the 1920s, also known as Scarface because of a knife cut to his left cheek.

Capone became a well-known gangster in Chicago, Illinois, controlling many illegal activities and amassing a large personal fortune.

BECOMES A GANGSTER

Alphonse Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York, on January 17, 1899. He left school at an early age and spent nearly ten years with gangs in Brooklyn.

In the 1920s, he moved to Chicago to work for the gangster Johnny Torrio. Capone gradually moved up in Torrio’s organization, helping to run the gambling, prostitution, and illegal liquor activities.

During the 1920s, gang activity increased because of Prohibition, the ban by constitutional amendment on the manufacture and sale of alcohol in the United States.

Prohibition generated a wave of organized criminal activity in America, and gangsters made huge amounts of money selling liquor illegally and running clubs that sold liquor

Mafia Menace ( II )

2009-07-22T10:06:00.000-07:00

Crackdown.

Many interpreted the brutal attacks as the Mafia's reaction to a loosening of its political ties and to ordinary Sicilians' growing intolerance.

The government responded by sending 2,000 extra police and carabinieri (paramilitary officers) to Palermo and deployed 7,000 army troops in Sicily to aid police in guarding installations and searching out criminals.

About 170 Mafia convicts were transferred to prisons on the secluded islands of Pianosa, off the Tuscan coast, and Asinara, off Sardinia. The isolation was to stop mob bosses from communicating with their clans even while in prison.

In August, Parliament passed a law authorizing special procedures for Mafia investigations and trials.

The six-month-old national Anti-Mafia Investigative Office, modeled on the American FBI, received broader powers, including authority to conduct intelligence operations.

The law also guaranteed witness protection and penalty reductions for Mafia defectors who cooperated with investigators and stipulated harsh penalties for false testimony.

It allowed testimony given outside the courtroom to be used as trial evidence, as a further protection for informers.

In past trials, witnesses had often retracted earlier out-of-court testimony, presumably because of threats.

An acting anti-Mafia prosecutor was appointed at the national level, and in October the Superior Council of Magistrates appointed Bruno Siclari, prosecutor for the Palermo appeals court, to the job.

Police made important arrests in the following months. In September, five bosses of major crime families in Sicily, Calabria, and the Naples region of Campania were captured.

Italy also obtained the extradition from Venezuela of three Sicilians regarded as key players in international drug traffic and money laundering.

A further 120 suspects, including businessmen and local politicians, were arrested around the country in November. New testimony by Mafia defectors finally allowed prosecutors to uncover ties between the mob and politicians.

Most notably, informers' testimony revealed that Salvo Lima had, indeed, been in collusion with the mob.

In December informers accused a top police official of being a Mafia spy, and in the same month four Mafia informers charged that, during his long career, former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti had forged ties with the Mafia to help keep his Christian Democratic Party in power.

Mafia Menace ( I )

2009-07-22T10:03:00.000-07:00

A Spate of Killings.

Though Mafia violence was all too familiar in southern Italy, the whole country was shocked by the assassinations of three prominent public officials within a few months in 1992.

In March, killers shot down Salvo Lima, a Christian Democrat considered Sicily's most powerful politician, who was suspected of Mafia ties.

A greater blow came in May when Judge Giovanni Falcone, a front-line Mafia prosecutor in the 1980s, was killed with his wife and three bodyguards by an explosion on a freeway outside Palermo, the Sicilian capital.

Judge Falcone had earned immense public esteem (and come under some political criticism) as the force behind a massive 22-month Mafia trial in the mid-1980s, in which more than 300 defendants came before one court.

His ability to convince arrested mafiosi to expose the inner workings of organized crime through testimony and his extensive collaboration with U.S.

investigators had given him an encyclopedic knowledge of the Sicilian Mafia's activities in Italy and abroad.

Falcone had been widely expected to be appointed head of a national prosecutor's office to coordinate Italy's anti-Mafia police and judicial forces, a post he had helped to create in his last position as penal affairs director in the justice ministry.

His state funeral was attended by thousands of citizens, who crowded onto the square in front of Palermo's cathedral, and was televised nationwide. As they left the service, senior government officials were jeered by the crowds demanding justice and swift action against the mob.

This attack, coming as Italy's new Parliament was dithering over the election of a president, prompted politicians in Rome to get on with forming the new government.

But in July the Mafia murdered a close friend and associate of Falcone's, Paolo Borsellino, a deputy chief prosecutor in Palermo and a leading candidate for the 'superprosecutor' post after Falcone's death.

With Italy's two top Mafia fighters slain, public outrage peaked. Police in Palermo threatened to strike in protest of the bodyguards' deaths, saying a state infiltrated by the mob made their work tantamount to martyrdom.

Palermo's chief prosecutor was transferred to Rome to prevent the resignations of eight prosecutors on his staff who accused him of negligence in ensuring their safety and of ineffectiveness in conducting Mafia investigations.

The prefect and police chief were also replaced, as were the heads of the national civilian and military secret services. Borsellino's family refused a state funeral.

Strikes, violence, and the Mafia

2009-07-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

Frequent short-term strikes, called by the trade unions in support of their demands for social reforms, caused considerable disruption.

Student unrest declined in comparison with the previous two or three years, but there were frequent clashes in Milan, Rome, and other cities between young extremists belonging to extra-parliamentary groups of both right and left.

The police, especially in Milan, found it difficult to cope with these bands, sometimes armed and varying from Fascists to anarchists and left-wing radicals.

In the extreme South, in Reggio di Calabria, demonstrations in protest against last year's decision to make Catanzaro the regional capital continued well into February.

On January 21 Reggio di Calabria initiated a general strike, which lasted 19 days, in support of its claims.

In Catanzaro, in turn, grenades exploded during an anti-Fascist rally on February 4, killing one person and injuring several others.

On February 16 the Calabrian regional assembly finally approved Catanzaro as the regional capital and seat of the regional government; in compensation, Reggio di Calabria was to house the regional assembly, which would sometimes meet there, alternating with Catanzaro and Cosenza. Rioting for a similar reason occurred in L'Aquila at the end of February, when that town contested the decision of the Abruzzi regional council that it should share the functions of regional capital with Pescara.

In both these instances the protest demonstrations were widely believed to have right-wing backing; but urgent reasons for protest in both cases lay in the poverty and unemployment in these southern towns, where people felt that governmental plans for development of the South had passed them by.

Sicily, too, felt it had cause for complaint when the government decided in 1970 to build Italy's fifth big steel plant in Calabria rather than on the island.

There, however, the main worry was the endemic one, the Mafia. On May 5, Pietro Scaglione, chief public prosecutor in Sicily since 1962, was shot dead with his chauffeur in his car in Palermo.

Over the past ten years he had had to deal with all the major Mafia crimes, and his murder was widely attributed to the Mafia—the more so since he was about to be transferred to a post on the mainland, carrying all his knowledge with him.

There was an immediate outcry in the legislature and the press for the anti-Mafia parliamentary commission, which had been in existence for eight years, to publish its findings; consequently, by the end of May four dossiers had been published.

A number of Mafia leaders held in Agrigento prison were transferred to the islands of Linosa and Filicudi—much to the wrath of the islanders, who began abandoning their homes.

They returned when the prisoners were transferred to the penal island of Asinara, off Sardinia. Extensive roundups of Mafia suspects went on in Rome, Milan, and Palermo in July.

Anti mafia campaign in italy

2009-07-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

By early August the coalition government under Italy's first Socialist premier, Bettino Craxi, had been in power for a year — quite a long tenure by Italian standards.

Besides the Socialists, representing 11.4 percent of the total electorate, the coalition included the Christian Democrats, responsible for all postwar Italian governments until 1983 and still numerically the largest party, and three smaller lay parties — the Social Democrats, Liberals, and Republicans.

The sudden death in June of Communist Party secretary-general Enrico Berlinguer removed a significant and much-respected figure from the political scene but seemed unlikely to affect the bitter Communist opposition to the Craxi government.

Domestic Political Affairs.

The government's first several months in office were marked by great activity. Craxi, aged 50 and intensely ambitious, was eager to establish the idea that his successful reform of the Socialist Party could extend to the government as a whole.

Much of his focus was economic: he pushed the 1984 budget through Parliament with unusual speed, embarked on plans to reduce the budget deficit, and started negotiations with employers and trade unions for curbing the scala mobile, the automatic wage-indexing system. He also initiated an antiterrorist bill.

On the international front, Craxi defied Soviet anger and Communist opposition by supporting the deployment of U.S. cruise missiles in Sicily.

The Socialist premier also turned his attention to religious matters. Church and state were made officially separate when a new concordat regulating the relations between Italy and the Vatican was signed on February 18 by Craxi and Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the Vatican secretary of state.

The agreement marked the only substantial revision of relations between Italy and the Holy See since the 1929 concordat concluded under Mussolini.

Under the new concordat, Roman Catholicism ceased to be the state religion, Rome lost its official designation as a 'sacred city,' and religious instruction in state schools was no longer mandatory.

In addition, the agreement reduced the number of religious institutions and members of the clergy receiving government financial contributions and made marriage annulments by the church subject to confirmation by the state.

The new concordat, concluded while Italy had Socialists in the offices of both president and premier, reflected the increasing secularization of Italian society.

Warm formal visits were exchanged after the signature between the pope and President Alessandro Pertini, who were on terms of close friendship.

In similar agreements concluded on February 21 between the government and both the Vaudois Evangelical Church and the Methodists, those churches renounced all financial contributions from the state and obtained the right of noninterference by the state.

This was the first such agreement to be made between the state and religious minorities.

Cracks began to appear in the coalition early in May over the proffered resignation of three Social Democrat ministers following an allegation that the name of one of them, Budget Minister Pietro Longo, appeared on a membership list of the secret Propaganda Two (P-2) Masonic lodge, banned in 1982 as a subversive organization.

The list was reportedly found in the home of Licio Gelli, the fugitive grandmaster of P-2, and was mentioned in the report about to be issued by a parliamentary commission investigating the P-2 scandal, which had brought down the Forlani government in 1981.

Longo strenuously denied the allegation, and Craxi rejected his offer to resign. But in July the commission's report finally appeared and it found the list of over 950 P-2 members to be 'authentic.' In the face of growing criticism, Longo resigned on July 12, denying any association with P-2, but stating that he was prepared to make a personal sacrifice rather than risk bringing down the government.

He was replaced as budget minister by another Social Democrat, Pier Luigi Romita, previously regional affairs minister.

Disaster befell the opposition Communist Party with the death, on June 11, of its secretary-general, Enrico Berlinguer, at age 62. He died of a brain hemorrhage, suffered after he addressed a European election rally in Padua on June 7.

Berlinguer, a Sardinian, had been leader of the Italian Communist Party since 1972 and was the virtual inventor of what is called Eurocommunism, which is typified by commitment to democracy and independence from Moscow.

His career reached its peak in 1976 when his party, the largest and most successful Communist party in the West, secured 34 percent of the total vote in parliamentary elections.

It later lost ground, falling to below 30 percent in 1983, but it continued to be the second strongest party in Italy; in 1978 the Communists were officially admitted to the parliamentary majority, supporting a Christian Democrat government.

Under Berlinguer the Italian Communists were critical of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan and the imposition of martial law in Poland; though he stopped short of total severance from Moscow's influence Berlinguer was firm about the importance of Italy's membership in NATO and the European Community. The quiet, intellectual Berlinguer was greatly respected in the party as a man of integrity.

His funeral in Rome on June 13 was the occasion for a remarkable and emotional final salute from over 1 million people; President Pertini, who had spoken of him in Padua as 'a just man unjustly removed,' was visibly shaken.

The Soviet Union was represented by Mikhail Gorbachev, a high-ranking Communist Party official, and China sent its premier, Zhao Ziyang.

Alessandro Natta, 66, president of the Communist Party's central control commission, was elected as Berlinguer's successor on June 26. A historian and a close friend of Berlinguer, Natta in his first news conference on July 4 reaffirmed the party's independence of Moscow and Italy's right to belong to NATO, although he said that the government should work for détente.

The June 17 elections to the European Parliament, coming so soon after Berlinguer's death, were inevitably somewhat influenced by the wave of sympathy for him.

Considered a possible first test for the Craxi government, the elections brought disappointment to the Socialists, who won only 11.2 percent of the total vote — slightly less, in fact, than their 11.4 percent in the 1983 election.

The Communist vote, on the other hand, went up from 29.9 percent to 33.3 percent and, for the first time in a nationwide election, surpassed the Christian Democrats, who at 33 percent improved slightly on their 1983 position.

This result was satisfactory to their secretary, Ciriaco de Mita, who believed the party could afford to bide its time and meanwhile continue to support the Craxi government.

Leaders of the five parties in the government coalition, taking advantage of the improving economic situation, signed an agreement on July 26 to maintain political cooperation and keep the Craxi government in office for several months — possibly even until the next presidential election due in mid-1985.

However, the government's chances of lasting that long were highly uncertain. Indeed, although the government on August 1 secured a vote of confidence on the cooperation agreement, the very next day Parliament refused approval for three proposed decrees.

The most important of those concerned the extension of the 34-year-old Southern Development Fund.

In the absence of parliamentary approval of the extension decree, the fund was automatically liquidated, with no replacement provided. The fund was a program to promote business in the depressed south through various incentives.

Introduction to Mafia

2009-07-22T09:51:00.000-07:00

Mafia, name for a loose association of criminal groups, sometimes bound by a blood oath and sworn to secrecy.

The Mafia first developed in Sicily in feudal times to protect the estates of absentee landlords.

By the 19th century the Mafia had become a network of criminal bands that dominated the Sicilian countryside.

The members were bound by Omerta, a rigid code of conduct that included avoiding all contact and cooperation with the authorities.

The Mafia had neither a centralized organization nor a hierarchy; it consisted of many small groups, each autonomous within its own district.

By employing terroristic methods against the peasant electorate, the Mafia attained political office in several communities, thus acquiring influence with the police and obtaining legal access to weapons.

Benito Mussolini's Fascist government succeeded for a time in suppressing the Mafia, but the organization emerged again after World War II ended in 1945.

Over the next 30 years the Mafia became a power not only in Sicily but all over Italy as well.

The Italian government began an anti-Mafia campaign in the early 1980s, leading not only to a number of arrests and sensational trials, but also to the assassination of several key law-enforcement officials in retaliation.

Public outrage was tempered by the arrest in 1993 of the reputed Mafia leader, Salvatore Riina.

Beginning in the late 19th century, some members of the Mafia immigrated to the United States.

They soon became entrenched in American organized crime, especially in the 1920s during Prohibition. After the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 ended most bootlegging, the Mafia moved into other areas, such as gambling, labor racketeering, prostitution, and, in recent years, narcotics.

Links with the Italian Mafia were also maintained.

As in Italy, prosecution of reputed Mafia leaders in the United States increased in the 1980s and 1990s.

Responsible groups of Americans have, at times, waged campaigns in the media to obliterate any assumption that crime in the United States is dominated by people of Italian descent, claiming that the existence of an American Mafia had not been fully established.