Turkish mafia boss Baris Boyun arrested in Viterbo

The investigation started in October 2023 after the arrest of three members of the organisation while they were trying to reach Switzerland: they were in possession of two pistols, one of which was illegal, ammunition and propaganda material. Subsequent investigations revealed that the three were escorting their leader, 39-year-old Boyun, and his companion, who were travelling in a separate car.

The investigators of the Mobile Squad of Como, of the Milan investigation section and of the Sco of Rome, led by the Public Prosecutor's Office, documented how Boyun, from a house in Crotone where he was under house arrest with an electronic bracelet for possession and carrying a common firing weapon, continued to direct and coordinate from Italy his network operating in Europe. They ranged from organising the entry of migrants, against fees, through the Balkan route, to ordering the murder of one of his fellow citizens on 10 March, to obliging his associates to commit crimes, including terrorist ones, in Europe, particularly in Berlin.

In Turkey, on the other hand, he was allegedly the 'mastermind' of the attack, later foiled thanks to the exchange of information between the Italian and Turkish police, on an aluminium factory on 19/20 March, thus showing that he had weapons with high firepower and a lot of money, mostly from drug trafficking, but also from cigarette and drug smuggling.

In view of the substantial flow of money for the association's activities, the Terrorism Financing Investigation Section of the Milan Gdf also cooperated in the investigation. The operation, which is still in progress, is involving hundreds of police officers between Switzerland and Italy, including personnel from the Mobile Squad of Como, the Sco in Rome, the Sco Investigative Section of Milan and Brescia, and the Mobile Squads of Catania, Crotone, Verona and Viterbo.

It was also a bug inserted in the electronic bracelet, as well as bugs planted throughout the house so that he could be 'listened to' 24 hours a day, that framed Boyun. In this way, the investigators, coordinated by the Milan anti-terrorism unit, were able to circumvent the problem of phone calls through encrypted platforms, and to listen to his every conversation, from which it emerges that from his house arrest he ordered his 'group' to carry out attacks, raids, and gave instructions on the trafficking of weapons, drugs, and the entry of Turkish citizens into Italy (from the border to Trieste) using the Balkan routes. And his responsibility as instigator of the murder committed last March in Germany 'was ascertained, once again, through the conversations picked up (...) in the Crotone flat', reports the order of the gip Roberto Crepaldi. In those days. while the alleged boss was in the bathroom, his wife read him some messages received, 'informing him that this Kamil in congratulating himself, evidently for the success of an unspecified activity, had written that 'it was finished, congratulations'. At this point Boyun told the woman to look in the address book for the entry 'Germany' where he would find the contact to whom he would write on Telegram 'congratulations, it's done'. In the investigation, then, there are two defence lawyers under investigation for receiving stolen goods as they were paid with money of illicit origin: the judge decided to reject the prohibitory measure requested against them by the prosecutor of the DDA Bruna Albertini. Finally, it should be noted that the 19th recipient of a precautionary measure was also caught in the Netherlands.

The 'political' aspect of the 'struggle' of Boyun, who is of Kurdish origin, emerges from an intercepted conversation on 16 January in which he announced that he had 'sent news to the higher hierarchy of the Pkk', the Kurdish paramilitary organisation. 'I said that we do not accept such an organisation,' he said, 'and that we will found a new organisation by starting a new revolution'. Boyun was "continuing from Italy", where he believed "he had found protection", "together with his men, a war to conquer supremacy over other criminal groups that have infested, in his opinion, the Turkish state, a fight that evidently involves not only the criminal aspect but also the institutional one, accused of flanking and favouring other organisations". The aim 'of the group headed by Boyun', writes the gip, was not limited to an 'armed struggle' between clans 'for the control of the territory and criminal dynamics (drug, arms and migrant trafficking), as often seen in the past in the Italian context between rival mafia associations, but took on a properly terrorist nature'. The 'attacks, murders, and kneecappings are certainly functional to impose themselves with respect to the other criminal groups,' explains the gip, 'but also to break the existing ties, always from the viewpoint of Boyun, between these and the State, orienting the behaviour of the institutions and evidently substituting themselves for those ties'. And 'destabilisation also passes', the judge summarises, 'by imposing terror on the population'.