Italy asks for extradition of convicted mafia boss

Italy has asked the Czech authorities for the extradition of Luigi Putrone, a Sicilian mafia boss who had been convicted in absentia of a number of crimes committed in the 1980s and 1990s. They included the kidnapping and murder of a 13-year-old boy, the son of a Mafia informer. For at least the last five years Putrone had been living under an assumed name in the north Bohemian town of Usti nad Labem where he was arrested by Czech police last month.