27 suspected mobsters arrested in Sicily

 Italian police arrested 27 people in an anti-mafia operation in Sicily's capital city of Palermo on Tuesday, local media reported.

The raid was carried out by military Carabinieri police and Special Operation Group (ROS) unit against a clan dominating a large neighborhood at the city's fringe, Ansa news agency reported.

All of those arrested were charged with mafia association, extortion, drug trafficking, and illegal gambling, according to prosecutors from the local Anti-Mafia District Directorate (DDA) which coordinated the operation.

The probe leading to the arrests also allowed investigators to discover how the clan selected its new leadership back in 2015, La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno newspaper, based in southern Italy, wrote.

A "vote" conducted by a show of hands among the clan's members took place to choose the new family boss, and his right-hand, the daily cited ROS police chief in Palermo Lucio Arcidiacono as reporting at a press conference.

"This election startled us, because we had never recorded similar cases within Cosa Nostra (Sicilian mafia) in our investigations," La Gazzetta quoted ROS deputy commander Giancarlo Scafuri as saying.

Also on Tuesday, the body of Italy's most notorious mafia boss, Toto Riina, was transferred under police escort from the northern city of Parma -- where he died on Nov. 17 -- to his Sicilian hometown Corleone to be buried.

As already happened with other mafia figures, Riina family was denied a public funeral and any religious mass, the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) stated last week.

His family would only be allowed a private burial in the communal cemetery of Corleone, the major mafia stronghold in the hearth of Sicily where he was born in 1930.

Riina died last Friday in the prisoners' wing of the hospital in Parma, after undergoing two surgeries for cancer in recent weeks. Jailed in January 1993, Riina was serving 26 life sentences for ordering dozens of killings, including those of Italy's top anti-mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

He was believed to have ruled over the Sicilian mafia since the late 1970s, and to be still partly in charge until his latest days, despite being in jail.
Among the killings for which Riina had been sentenced to life, was that of Sicilian governor Piersanti Mattarella, the older brother of current Italian President Sergio Mattarella, who was killed in 1980.