PARAMILITARY POLICE HAVE found two charred bodies in Sicily of Italian-Canadian gangsters suspected of drug trafficking to Canada who were being sought in a raid that netted 21 alleged mafiosi.
The two bodies, discovered at a garbage tip, were that of Juan Ramon Fernandez, 57, known as “Joe Bravo”, and Fernando Pimentel, 36, said the Carabinieri police in a statement on Thursday.
They were suspected of trafficking in heroin and oxycodone from Sicily to Canada together with a mafia clan based in Bagheria near Palermo, which was targeted in an operation on Wednesday.
The operation, dubbed “Argo”, was carried out jointly by Italian and Canadian police.
The bodies were riddled with around 30 gunshots.
The Carabinieri police said two mafia “men of honour”, the Bagheria-born Scaduto brothers, had already been arrested as suspects in the murders and said they were searching for others in the case.
Police think the order to kill Fernandez and Pimentel had come from Canada and was part of a turf war between two rival mafia bosses in Canada — the Vito Rizzuto mafia family and a new rebel faction led by Quebecois Raynald Desjardin.
Fernandez — an alleged member of the Toronto-based Rizzuto family — was deported from Canada and moved to Bagheria after serving a 10-year prison sentence for extortion, drug trafficking and illegal possession of firearms.
Pimentel was also involved in organised crime in Toronto and had arrived in Sicily in March.
Their bodies were found near a farmhouse outside the town of Casteldaccia near Bagheria.
The ANSA news agency said police were tipped off to the location by an anonymous phone-call.
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