ROME, June 12 (Reuters) – The founder and chairman of Italian car rental company Sicily by Car, Tommaso Dragotto, said in an interview on Friday he had been given a police escort after a string of attacks on his company.
In the latest incident, which triggered the decision to place the 88-year-old under protection, a company car depot in the Sicilian capital of Palermo was set ablaze in the early hours of Thursday, destroying 11 vehicles.
Two other arson attacks have taken place in the last three months, and in March Italian news agencies reported that gunshots were fired at the entrance of one of the company sites.
“Three (arson) attacks in eighty days is really too much. I didn’t want an escort, because it changes your freedom, your movements, your daily life. They told me that I cannot refuse it,” Dragotto told La Stampa.
He also said he had never been asked to pay protection money to the mafia, and that he would refuse any such request: “One thing should be clear: I have never paid, I will never pay, and I will not start now”.
Following Thursday’s attack, Palermo anti-mafia prosecutors and police said eight people had been arrested on charges of extortion and attempted murder, aggravated by the use of mafia methods.
Sicily’s Cosa Nostra mafia, which was rampant in the 1980s and early 1990s, has lost influence in recent decades following the arrest of its senior leadership. It nevertheless remains a fearsome organisation.
Mayor Roberto Lagalla said the city had in recent months suffered from “a worrying escalation of acts of intimidation, arson attacks, and acts of violence against business people, shopkeepers, and citizens.”
(Reporting by Mirko Miorelli, editing by Alvise Armellini and Gavin Jones)
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