Camorra boss Aldo Gionta arrested en route to Malta

A Camorra boss who was said to disguise himself as a tourist, even as a woman, in a bid to escape arrest has been finally taken in by police as he attempted to board the catamaran to Malta.

Aldo Gionta, 42, was wanted since last May for Mafia association.

Known by his nickname ‘The Poet’, his gang was connected to Neapolitan singer Tony Marciano, arrested in July two years ago for drug dealing and criminal association.

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Investigators believe that some messages sent by Gionta’s criminal affiliates had even become part of Marciano’s ‘neomelodico’ songs, who sang praise to the camorristi fugitives.

Gionta’s father Valentino, currently held in Italy’s maximum security prison under the notorious 41-bis law, is the founder of the clan of Torre Annunziata.

In a letter seized in Opera prison in 2008, he called on his son to learn how to use an AK-47 machine gun and to “watch out for bugs”.

Accused of mafia-type criminal association and wanted since June 2013, Gionta would camouflage himself to escape arrest, using eyeglasses and wigs, going so far as to disguise himself as a woman, to circumvent the checks of law enforcement during his travels.

When he was stopped on Sunday night, trying to blend in among the tourists, he was arrested together with three other accomplices, aged 23, 32, and 38, all from the Torre Annunziata clan of Sant’Antonio Abate, with a fake ID and €1,000 in cash.

He was taken to jail in Syracuse while the other three are awaiting trail.