Inter Milan hooligan leader stabs mafia heir to death, claims self-defense after being shot in the leg

MILAN, September 5 — The leader of a group of fanatical fans of the Inter Milan football club yesterday stabbed to death a member of an Italian criminal gang, saying he acted in self-defense.

Andrea Beretta, 49, head of the ultras supporters of “curva nord” (north side) said he stabbed fellow Inter fan Antonio Bellocco, 36, after shooting him in the leg with a firearm, his lawyer and Italian media reported.

Beretta will be questioned by a prosecutor in his hospital bed on Wednesday evening, his lawyer Mirko Perlino told AFP.

The two men got into an argument yesterday morning as they rode together in a car outside a sports centre in the Milan suburb of Cernusco sul Naviglio.

Perlino told AFP his client stabbed the victim in the throat in self-defense.

Beretta, who has been convicted on several occasions for violence and drug trafficking, became head of the Inter-ultras after their historic leader Vittorio Boiocchi was assassinated in October 2022.

According to press reports, Bellocco is the heir to a powerful ‘Ndrangheta crime family from Calabria and has been convicted in the past for organised crime activities.

The prosecutor assigned to the case is Paolo Storari, a specialist in organised crime who led investigations into Boiocchi’s murder and into the Mafia’s infiltration of hardline Italian football supporter groups. — AFP