Italian football hooligan leader kills mafia heir

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The leader of a group of fanatical fans of the football club Inter Milan stabbed to death a member of an Italian criminal gang on Wednesday, calling it self-defense.

Andrea Beretta, 49, head of the ‘curva nord’ (north side) ultras football supporters, 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 on Wednesday 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 the investigation into Boiocchi’s murder and into the Mafia’s infiltration of hard-core Italian football supporter groups.

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