Three other warrants for year-long intimidation in Calabria
A member of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta mafia was arrested on Friday in connection with a bombing campaign last year aimed at intimidating judges and prosecutors in Reggio Calabria.
Vincenzo Puntorieri, 30, is accused of planting bombs in January and August 2010 along with Antonio Cortese, one of three already arrested who were served fresh warrants in the case Friday.
The other two are boss-turned-state's witness Antonino Lo Giudice and his brother Luciano.
Cortese was fingered by Lo Giudice last year as one of the men who carried out the attacks.
He was arrested on October 20 on the strength of Lo Giudice's statements to police.
Lo Giudice said Cortese, an experienced bomb-maker, was directly responsible for bombs which exploded on January 3, 2010 at Reggio's courthouse and on August 26 outside the home of Prosecutor General Salvatore Di Landro.
The boss also told investigators it was Cortese who sent a bazooka to the local anti-Mafia bureau in October.
Cortese was caught on the border between Italy and Slovenia.
In the wake of the attacks, the Italian government sent in the army to guard judicial buildings in Reggio.
Lo Giudice was the second 'Ndrangheta clan chief to turn informant in a month after Roberto Moio, both key breakthroughs in the fight against the criminal organisation which is tighter-knit than Sicily's Cosa Nostra and now considered Italy's richest and most powerful mafia.
Police described the bombing campaign as a reaction to the success of a wave of operations against 'Ndrangheta.
"The extraordinary work of judges and police is bothering the clans. The mafiosi are on edge, and reacting nervously," a prosecutor said after the Yugoslav-made M80 bazooka was found on October 5 in what an anonymous phone caller described as "a gift" for Reggio Chief Prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone.
Pignatone had previously been the object of threats on May 27 when a letter containing three bullets was sent to him.
Another incident occurred on June 16 when Di Landro's driver found the bolts on his car wheels loosened.
'Ndrangheta, whose name means 'virtue' or 'heroism' in a local form of ancient Greek, once dealt mainly in kidnappings and extortion and fed off the pickings of public tenders.
But it has since expanded to northern Italy and northern Europe, where it invests the huge profits of its chokehold on the European cocaine trade
