One of Italy’s largest-ever mafia trials kicked off on Wednesday, with more than 320 suspected mobsters and their associates facing an array of charges, including extortion, drug trafficking and theft https://reut.rs/2XyL3t4 

The trial is being held in a converted call-center in the Calabrian city of Lamezia Terme, with defendants placed in metal cages and rows of desks set up for the hundreds of lawyers, prosecutors, journalists and spectators expected to attend

Prosecutor Nicola Gratteri has spent the past three decades battling Italy’s most powerful mob group, the 'Ndrangheta, renouncing any semblance of a normal life as he seeks to break its grip on his native Calabria https://reut.rs/2XDWQGk 

The toe of Italy’s boot, Calabria is a rugged backwater from where the ‘Ndrangheta operates its multi-billion dollar crime syndicate, controlling chunks of Europe’s cocaine trade and laundering vast sums through a network of front businesses

On Wednesday, Gratteri launched one of the most ambitious legal assaults yet on the group, with the start of the largest mob trial in Italy in 30 years, putting 355 suspected gangsters and their associates in the dock on an array of charges

Gratteri, 62, has had an armed escort ever since he first started probing ‘Ndrangheta in 1989 but is taking even more care now as the stakes get ever higher https://reut.rs/2XDWQGk