Inside the life of the Mafia's most wanted man who can't move 'without escort'
A man who has dedicated his life to fighting one of the three big mafia-style crime organisations in Italy through the power of prosecution has to live under remarkable conditions
A man dubbed the Mafia’s most wanted is forced to live a life of secrecy and security in a bid to avoid assassination.
Mafia prosecutor Nicola Gratteri, 65, has spent much of his life taking on one of the most powerful crime syndicates in the world – the ‘Ndrangheta.
He’s from Calabria in the south of Italy which is, funnily enough, also where the Ndrangheta call home.
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Sky News reports that Mr Gratteri is forced to regularly mix up his routes to work at the public prosecutor's office in the regional capital of Catanzaro in a bid to outfox potential threats.
Mr Gratteri goes to work in an armoured car convoy – one vehicle of which is fitted with a signal jammer that is designed to stop bombs from being remotely activated.
He has survived multiple assassination attempts and as such has to have police protection at all times.
He has been forced to operate in this way for 30 years and is understood to be more security dependent than the prime minister of Italy.
Speaking to the outlet he explained: "I can't do anything without a police escort”.
He added: "Inside my house, it's like Big Brother. There are security cameras everywhere, even in the garden where I feed my chickens."
Some 300 Mafia victims are on his list of people he is working with, people for who he is the “last resort”.
He has been a lawyer since the 1980s and has since made it his mission to fight organised crime.
Talking about growing up, he said: "I saw so many people killed, I saw such violence. The sons of the 'Ndrangheta bosses behaved like little mafia bosses at school. They were violent like their fathers".
He noted that his pal's father was killed when the lad was only 11 and never spoke again after that.
The boy, plotting to get revenge, was later killed too as he got out of his car.
Within a few years on the job, Gratteri explained: "I felt the 'Ndrangheta breathing down my neck”.
Bullets were fired into the door of his fiancee’s home and then she received a call at 2am telling her she was going to marry a “dead man.”
He said: "I've lost count of the threats, the anonymous phone calls, the media pressure”.
In 1993, he escaped three assassination attempts in three weeks and in 2005 a police bust found weapons and bombs planned for use on him.
There has even been an underground bunker courtroom in Lamezia Terme built for an ongoing “mafia maxi trial”, a location he deems “one of the safest places”.
He is forced to live apart from his wife and they only meet up in safehouses.
The sacrifices he has to make are huge, adding: "I see my children for half an hour every two months but ours is a strong relationship. It's not the time we spend with our children, but the intensity of it.”
He continued: "I haven't taken a dip in the sea for 30 years, even though it's very close”.
But despite this, he explained: "I never think of stopping, I always want to do more."
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