TWO men have been arrested by police investigating the murder of Italian World Cup winner Daniele De Rossi's father-in-law, who was gunned down in a suspected Mafia hit.
Massimo Pisnoli, 48, was found with gunshot wounds to his face and back last month in undergrowth near a railway station after being missing for ten days.
The men, aged 40 and 48, were held in dawn raids at addresses in Rome. Police also seized
an arsenal of weapons and 230g of cocaine.
They were held after an investigation led by anti-Mafia prosecutor Giancarlo Capaldo, who had also used undercover officers at Pisnoli's funeral to obtain information.
Pisnoli was well known to police and earlier this week they released footage of him carrying out an armed robbery on a bank in Rome two weeks before he was found dead at Campoleone station.
The CCTV footage shows him grabbing a customer and putting a knife to her throat as he demands money from cashiers before using her as a shield to get past armed guards at the door.
Police believe two other men were involved in the raid as well as others across the city and that Pisnoli was killed after failing to equally share the money.
De Rossi last night dedicated his two goals in Italy's World Cup qualifier against Georgia to his father-in-law.
Besides being a World Cup winner, the player is well known to Manchester United fans for scoring Roma's only goal when they lost 7-1 at Old Trafford in a Champions League quarter-final in April 2007. Pisnoli was the father of De Rossi's wife Tamara, whom he married in May 2006 just before the World Cup Finals in Germany.
They have a three-year-old daughter called Gaia. At the time of his murder last month, a police source said: "It was a classic execution, a bullet in the back and one to the mouth – he was virtually unrecognisable and his body was found with its arms up in the air.
"From what we can gather, it had been there at least a week and it was in a pretty bad state. He had convictions for robbery and theft and we know he moved in underworld circles.
"The area where he was found, south Lazio, is home to clans from the Neapolitan Camorra and the Calabrian N'drangheta."
The two arrested men were named by police as Gabrielle Piras, 48, from Sardinia, and Giuseppe Arena, 40, from Palermo, Sicily, both with previous convictions for robbery, drug dealing and possession of firearms.
Police said that both men had taken part in the armed robbery with Pisnoli in which 10,000 was stolen.
Officers believe that he failed to share the money with the men and that they lured him to the station where he was shot dead.
During the press conference, police displayed an arsenal of weapons seized in garages belonging to Piras and Arena.
These included three shotguns, one sawn-off shotgun, a machine gun, a pump-action shotgun, three handguns, a revolver and explosives.
Pisnoli is thought to have been killed with shotguns. Also found were a silencer, fake identity documents and police uniforms.
The full article contains 543 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
