More Than 200 Mobsters Get Over 2,000 Years In Historic Italian Mafia Trial

Prosecutors had asked for sentences totalling nearly 5,000 years for 322 accused mafia members operating in the Calabrian province of Vibo Valentia.

An Italian court on Monday convicted more than 200 mobsters and their white-collar helpers, the culmination of a historic, nearly three-year trial against Calabria's notorious 'Ndrangheta mafia.

For over an hour and a half, the president of the court in southern Vibo Valentia, Brigida Cavasino, steadily read out the names of the guilty and their sentences, which ranged from 30 years to a few months, as defendants incarcerated in prisons across the country watched via videolink.

Prosecutors had asked for sentences totalling nearly 5,000 years for 322 accused mafia members operating in the Calabrian province of Vibo Valentia and their collaborators who have exercised a virtual stranglehold over the local population.