DEEP in the foothills of southern Italy, a vicious new mafia gang is wreaking havoc on locals by executing enemies in broad daylight and bombing businesses.

Behind the welcoming veneer of the villages of Foggia, Apulia, lays a dark and sinister network of mobsters who slay their victims with a sawn-off shotgun blast to the face.

Borne out of the bloody Neapolitan La Nuova Camorra gang, the Gargano clan is unleashing a brutal wave of violence at a rate unseen in Italy for decades.

The gang – which is one of four major mafias operating in the once-sleepy farming region – is renowned for their “Ritual of Death” which involves blowing a victim’s face off at close range with a sawn-off shotgun.

Violence has picked up in recent years as clans battle each other for a slice of Foggia’s billion-pound-a-year narcotics trade that sees drugs shipped into the port of Gargano and then dispersed across Western Europe.

“They want to express a measure of hate that goes above and beyond the idea itself of killing,” Italian prosecutor Giuseppe Gatti, the man leading the charge to put the vile thugs behind bars, told The Sun Online.

“The ritual of killing can be thought of as trying to eliminate someone physically.

"But here, they aren’t simply trying to eliminate someone; they are really trying to cancel any memories of this person.

“Shooting someone in the face means cancelling their memory and not giving their loved ones the chance to see their face for a final time. This is an act of extreme savagery.”

Federica Bianchi, who runs the local chapter Libera, an anti-Mafia organisation, said the Gargano group was “one of the most cruellest” and forced locals to observe a code of silence, known as l'Omertà.

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She said her organisation constantly faces harassment from locals who want them gone.

"When he tried to tell locals they have a mafia problem… we were often told that we were too fixated on the mafia, as if we wanted to deliberately pick them out.

"There were even times when we were told that we were dirtying Foggia's reputation and that we were frightening tourists and scaring business owners away.

"We were told that we were better off staying quiet."

And it's hard not to see why – the Gargano clan and the groups that make up the Foggian Society (La Società Foggiana) – partially run by Rocco "The Pig" Moretti, Vincenzo "Capantica" Pellegrino and Vito Bruno "The Hare" Lanza – are some of the deadliest in Italy.

The men ran the notorious Moretti-Pellegrino-Lanza cell which extorted hundreds of businesses and was one of many clans that were brought to life by godfather Raffaele "The Prince" Cutolo.

Pellegrino was credited for his involvement in the brutal slaying of anti-Mafia campaigner and philanthropist Giovanni Panunzio who was gunned down while celebrating his wedding anniversary.

Moretti, on the other hand, spearheaded a resurgence of the Foggian Society when he strengthened ties between clans.

Lanza, whose was renowned for bribing witnesses with prostitutes, is now spending 14 years behind bars.

The trigger-happy thugs have killed 300 people in over four decades, according to The Times, and committed a murder every week a robbery once a day between 2017 and 2018, according to the Guardian.

In the port town of Gargano alone, 80 per cent of killings went unsolved and mafia bosses are believed have killed 360 people since the 1970s, the publication reported.

And then there's the Cerignola clan, whose boss Vincenzo "The Professor" La Piccirella was jailed on drug hauling charges in 2013, which is renowned for its ruthless car jackings and cocaine smuggling operations.

“They don’t want anything to remain of that person,” Federica told us.

“It’s a strong signal that they’re not going to leave any dignity for the dead person… The Gargano clan are using a form a violence unheard of”.

The ruthless thugs are also known for hiding their victims bodies in an execution style known as a "Lupara Bianca".

A HEARTBREAKING TALE

ITALIAN prosecutor Giuseppe Gatti knows first-hand how Foggian gangs operate.

His years of service in Italy's anti-mafia body the DNA has exposed him to heart-breaking stories of fear and loss among locals.

But it wasn't until Mr Gatti interviewed an extorted business owner that he begin to understand the gangs' main draw.

Mr Gatti told The Sun Online that the victim agreed to confess to being extorted following hours of interrogation, which the Italian prosecutor thought would make the man feel "liberated".

But those emotions soon turned to desperation as the man "began crying and was filled with terror".

"I asked him: ‘What’s wrong, are you still afraid of the mafia?’ And he told me: ‘No, doctor, I’m not scared of them anymore’ and then he told me something that’s remained with me ever since, he said: ‘My problem is that, dear doctor, when tomorrow comes and I return to my village, people will know what I did here with you today and then no one will come to my bar any longer to drink a coffee. For me, my business is dead."

“And that’s when I understood the power of this gang," Mr Gatti told us.

"Their power wasn’t within the mafia, but outside of it. Their power lies in us – good people who are not able to reach out to the community for help, to stay as one, but instead be alone in solitude.

"Forcing people into solitude is the mafia’s real strength”.

Mr Gatti said that educating residents about how the mafia operates and working together with organisations to oppose them was the only way to quash their influence.

In 2011, cops discovered a makeshift gravesite hidden deep in the caves of Gargano filled with "Lupara Bianca" victims who had been dumped there "in plastic bags like rubbish," Mr Gatti said.

“They have created a climate of fear, of terror and this has brought a total Omerta – a code of silence. It is absolute and because of this extortion occurs ‘under the carpet’," Mr Gatti, a magistrate in Italy’s anti-mafia directorate, the DNA, explained.

When the gangs are not busy extorting the nearly 90 per cent of Foggian business owners, according to Mr Gatti, they're funnelling drugs through its territories or fighting other clans in bloody shoot-outs.

In January alone, Italy’s ministry of the Interior set up a taskforce to tackle rising violence against local business owners after another two bombs exploded in front a hairdressers, local media reports claim.

That brings the total bombings in Foggia since the beginning of 2022 to six, according to Ansa.

At one point, the cash-strapped gang even charged funeral homes £45 (€50) a coffin to bury their dead, the Guardian reported in 2020.

Much like the Gargano clan, it’s the Foggian Society’s taste for violence and its fluid structure that sets it apart from others.

Mr Gatti said the group has ditched initiation ceremonies that in the past have included drawing blood over a hot candle while making an oath to their "family" and Catholic saints.

Instead, the ruthless outfit operates in “batterie”, or cells, and coalesce to trade drugs and, as Mr Gatti points out, real-life goods.

“Don’t think of this mafia as primitive, fierce, violent, closed and restricted to a patchwork of areas in Foggia," he told us.

“No, this is a mafia that has channelled its ‘military’ prowess into allowing them to build more cash that today allows them to enter the legal economy. 

“And once the mafia infiltrates the legal economy, they enter this grey zone.”

He said members were part of a “backward society” where “bloody violence, harassment, vendettas, dominance and subjugation" went hand in hand with a "yearning thirst for money and power, where l’Omerta is king and the rule of every thought and every action." 

“They live their lives through alternative rules that are different to those of a free, democratic society.”

He said gangs have started selling tomatoes and other agricultural goods at cut-throat prices as a means the launder their cash, sending legitimate firms bust.

“It is an organisation that is constantly changing, that is evolving, and is constantly updating and refining its illegal networks.

“When the military wing of the mafia merges with the business wing, they build an organisation that is much stronger and much more efficient.

“At the end of the day, all the mafia wants is to gain power and make money”.

WHO ARE THE FOGGIAN SOCIETY?

LA Societa Foggiana was created by Neapolitan kingpin Raffaele ‘The Professor’ Cutolo on January 5, 1979.

At the time, Cutolo ran the notorious la Nuova Camorra Organizzata (the New Camorra Organisation) and was looking to expand his criminal empire into neighbouring Apulia.

Since then, the gang has ballooned into four competing splinter groups (The Gargano Clan, the San Severo Clan and the Cerignola Clan, and the Foggian Society) all vying for a piece of the region's multi-billion-pound narcotics business.

The clans have become so powerful that Italy's anti-mafia directorate, the DNA, was forced to declare a "national emergency" in Apulia and set up a taskforce following a spate of bombings and daylight executions which rocked the region to its core.

At one point, the gangs were carrying one bombing a week and a robbery a day and shamelessly charged funeral homes £45 a coffin to bury their dead.

On August 9, 2017, two innocent farmers were killed when a hit on a rival mafia boss went wrong.

Known as the Massacre of Marco San Lamis, the menwere gunned down after witnessing mafia boss Mario Luciano Romito and his brother-in-law killed outside their property and were shot in the back as they fled.

In 2020, the Foggian Society exploded bombs outside a key witness’ house and shot dead a 50-year-old man in his car, according to the Guardian.

Violence erupted again in 2021 when five people, including a British couple and their baby, were gunned down during Euro 2020 celebrations.

And in early January 2022, two bombs exploded outside a hairdresser’s and a local fireworks shop, bring the total number of bombings since the start of the year to six.

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