Toddler Used ‘as Shield’ by Grandpa in Italy’s Deadly Mafia War

A toddler killed in a clan war which prompted Pope Francis to excommunicate all mafia members was being used as a human shield by his grandfather, Italy's top anti-mafia prosecutor said yesterday.

Italian police said two people had carried out the bloody attack, which saw three-year-old “Coco” Campolongo shot in the head alongside his grandfather Giuseppe Iannicelli and his grandfather's Moroccan girlfriend in a mob hit linked to drug-dealing territory.

Drug-dealing Iannicelli had been trying to expand his business in Cosenza — a territory controlled by the powerful 'Ndrangheta mafia — and had begun taking his grandson with him on drug runs in a bid to stave off reprisals.

“He took him with him everywhere, using him as a human shield,” prosecutor Franco Roberti told journalists, as police said the pair accused of murder were already behind bars serving time for extortion.

"Mafia is from the Arabic word for refuge, from when they occupied Sicily and the Sicilians took refuge in the hills." - nickcarraway

I saved the following details from a 2004 comment on a yahoo forum which also sounds plausible:

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FWIW:

The Mafia, which did originate in Sicily under muslim rule during 9th-11th centuries. Even today, Northern Italians can sometimes jokingly refer to Sicilians as the “Arabs of Europe”.

* Mafia (or Maffia). from the original Sicilian for “swaggering braggadocio”, most likely came from the Arabic word “Mahias” or is a corruption of the Arabic word mu afah, in which mu means something like ‘inviolability, strength, vigour,’ and afah something like “to secure, to protect.’
* “Protection” rackets are run along the same lines as jizyah.
* there’s the code of “honor” and vendetta — too Arab/Islamic for words.
* The code of Omerta is very much like the prohibition against speaking ill of Islam or speaking out against Islamic atrocities by other Muslims.
* the only way out of the Mafia is death (or the Witness Protection Program).
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Sicily, an island in the Mediterranean Sea between North Africa and the Italian mainland, was ruled by a long line of foreign invaders, including the Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, French and Spanish. The residents of this island, which measures almost 10,000 square feet, formed groups to protect themselves from the often-hostile occupying forces, as well as from other regional groups of Sicilians.
Shariah justice does not recognize the rights of non-believers as equal to those of believers.
Sicilians banded together in groups to protect themselves and carry out their own justice.
The Sicilians knew they would NEVER find justice with their Muhammedan overlords.
In Sicily, the term “mafioso,” or Mafia member, initially had no criminal connotations and was used to refer to a person who was suspicious of central authority. "

[snip]
These groups, which later became known as clans or families, developed their own system for justice and retribution, carrying out their actions in secret. By the 19th century, small private armies known as “mafie” took advantage of the frequently violent, chaotic conditions in Sicily and extorted protection money from landowners.
The term “‘mafia’ originated from a Sicilian-Arabic slang expression that means “acting as a protector against the arrogance of the powerful” .

From this history, the Sicilian Mafia emerged as a collection of criminal clans or families.
Omerta: Code of La Cosa Nostra
The Mafioso adhered to this strict code of silence when dealing with the law. Death was the almost certain punishment for violators.
According to Omerta, seeking justice from the law is a cowardly act, punishable by death. If you want justice, you get it yourself.
Of course, the code of silence itself was a secret.
Omerta mirrors a lot of the behaviors we recognize today, with the purging of any terminology from law enforcement and national security vocabulary which may negatively reflect on Islam or Muslims - a strict adaptation of shariah.

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