Regional Italian Mafia Targets Restaurant in Terrorist Attack

A piazza in Foggia, Italy, whose Poseidon restaurant was the site of an attempted bombing attack. (Wikimedia Commons)

Members of the 17th police Mobile Unit in the city of Foggia, Italy, arrested a 45-year-old man and his 16-year-old son for planting a homemade bomb at the Poseidon restaurant in Foggia, Italy on February 19. The fourth reported bombing-related incident of the year in the Foggia area, the attack targeted a business previously attacked during the 2019 “bombing season.” 

The province of Foggia has experienced an uptick in violence during the past few years, attributed to the increasing presence of the emergent regional mafia group Società Foggiana. This Foggian mafia split from the larger Apulian Sacra Corona Unita in the late 1980’s and has come to extort a protection tax, or ‘pizzo’ from 70% of businesses in Foggia. The Foggian mafia, sometimes called a “fourth mafia” in addition to those of Sicily, Calabria, and Naples, illegally imports the majority of Italy’s marijuana from Albania. The group is known for its extreme violence, which has increased following a mass trial in November 2021 that saw the conviction of many members of the ‘Ndrangheta mafia from Calabria. 

Foggia’s prosecution office has expanded to face the challenges presented by the recent growth of the local mafia; it has made hundreds of arrests since 2017, a year which saw increased violence between mafias following the murders of brothers-in-law and local bosses Matteo De Palma and Mario Luciano Rometo. However, whereas anti-mafia operations taking place in nearby Bari seized assets worth upwards of a billion euros, the Foggian mafia has not yet experienced targeted financial losses. In August 2021, the municipality of Foggia was dissolved for association with the mafia. Nevertheless, the Foggian mafia’s violence continues to stoke fear in the area, resulting in the Italian Interior Minister convening an emergency meeting in January 2022 during which she committed 50 additional police officers to the municipality.