In the Sicilian capital of Palermo, video footage released Thursday evening showed dozens of police cars and agents descending on homes in several towns and taking away numerous men in handcuffs. One mouthed defiantly at the camera.
Italian investigators said the two clans targeted in the operation -- code-named "Old Bridge" -- appeared to be working to reestablish ties that had bound Mafiosi in the U.S. and Italy for generations but had frayed during bloody internal feuds of the 1980s and early '90s.
The arrests came at a time of unusual public outcry in Sicily over the extortion rackets that Mafiosi have employed against businesses for years.
Many of those picked up by authorities overnight had ties to the Gambino clan or a group loyal to Salvatore Lo Piccolo, a Sicilian boss arrested in November.
According to Italian authorities, Lo Piccolo was attempting to set himself up as the Cosa Nostra's next "boss of bosses" by reaching out to allies in the U.S. who had fled the turf wars in Sicily 20 years ago.
Those who fled had lost a power struggle for control of the Cosa Nostra to the Corleone gang, headed by the especially brutal Salvatore Riina until his arrest in 1993.
Riina was succeeded by Bernardo Provenzano, who used his leadership to move the Cosa Nostra into businesses and away from a head-on battle with the Italian government. He was arrested in 2006 after 40 years on the lam, opening the way for Lo Piccolo to take over.
With Riina gone and the Corleone influence diminished, several Cosa Nostra mobsters living in New York and New Jersey began to return to their ancestral haunts in Sicily, encouraged by Lo Piccolo, who favored "pacification" and saw new business opportunities, Italian authorities said.
Pietro Grasso, Italy's chief anti-Mafia prosecutor, said that the latest raids were a "natural extension" of the arrests of Provenzano and Lo Piccolo, which have enabled authorities to break down sections of the Mafia.
"The evidence gathered in these investigations has shed light on the growing importance of renewed relations between Cosa Nostra families in Sicily and America, especially the Gambino family in New York," Grasso said in a news conference.
"The Cosa Nostra . . . was trying -- but fortunately was stopped in time -- [to establish] a further connection with the American Cosa Nostra, in order to be able to return to drug trafficking with both feet."
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erika.hayasaki@latimes.com
tracy.wilkinson@latimes.com
Hayasaki reported from New York, and Wilkinson reported from Rome.
