Three members of a Nigerian crime gang in Palermo, Sicily, have been sentenced to jail by an Italian court.
The court is sentencing them to at least a decade in prison each, for crimes including attempted murder.
This was contained in the court’s verdict, reached on Wednesday and made available on Friday.
The court handed down sentences of 12 years and four months to the gang’s boss and just over 10 years each to two others.
An attack on two people with bottles and axes in January 2014 in Palermo’s Ballaro street market, was believed to have been carried out by the group.
Prosecutors said the trio brought to Palermo the practices of the “Black Axe“ cult, which Nigerian police said carried out ritual murders, mutilation and rape in the early 1990s.
Prosecutors also said the group answered to Italy’s most storied mafia organisation, the Cosa Nostra, as if they were its subjects, using mafia techniques in carrying out attempted murder, armed robbery, bodily harm, extortion and drug-dealing.
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