Mafia boss ‘beaten and fed alive to pigs’, Italian police hears

A group of mafia assassins from southern Italy beat a rival with a spade and fed him alive to pigs, according to police, Sky News reported.

Francesco Raccosta disappeared in March 2012 but his body has never been found, a court in the city of Reggio said.

Detectives arrested one of Racosta's suspected murderers after they allegedly recorded him bragging about the hit after tapping his telephone during Operazione Erinni, an anti-mafia campaign in southern Italy during which 20 suspects were arrested.

"It was such a pleasure to hear him scream," the suspect said. "In my opinion, there's nothing left of him ... This pig can really eat!"

The murder of Raccosta demonstrated the "utmost ruthlessness and cruelty" of the mafia clans, police said.

The hit was allegedly one of five carried out in retaliation for the killing of boss Domenico Bonarrigo, who was shot three times while driving his car 11 days earlier, according to investigators.

The killings were part of a mob war between rival factions of the 'Ndrangheta, as the Calabrian mafia is known, for criminal control of territory near the town of Oppido Mamertino.

The 'Ndrangheta is a loose-knit group of some 100 mafia clans who play a key role in smuggling cocaine into Italy and other parts of Europe.

They are said to have eclipsed the economic might of the Sicilian mafia, Cosa Nostra.

Raccosta is believed to have been killed due to a decades' long and deadly rivalry between the Bonarrigo-Mazzagatti-Polimeni and the Ferraro-Raccosta syndicate, which he was part of.