(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 7 - A Carabiniere and a retired Carabiniere, a Camorra boss turned informant's son and a businessmen were arrested Thursday in the 2010 Camorra mafia murder of Angelo Vassallo, the so-called 'fisherman-mayor' of the seaside village of Pollica in southern Campania, who had denounced a local drug trafficking ring allegedly involving cops.
    Vassallo, 56, was gunned down outside his home on September 5, 2010, having openly fought organized crime and building speculators who have marred coasts and countryside all over the Mezzogiorno.
    Among his many battles to protect environmental and cultural heritage along Italy's lovely Cilento coast, Vassallo had denounced to police a drug trafficking ring operating around Pollica that was found to have been run by a Calabrian 'Ndrangheta mafia clan from the Cosenza area.
    Those arrested Thursday were: Carabinieri officer Fabio Cagnazzo; Romolo Ridosso, the son of a boss and police informant, of the Camorra Scafati Loreto-Ridosso clan; businessman Giuseppe Ciprian; and former Carabinieri brigadier Lazzaro Cioffi.
    Vassallo was allegedly killed after having confided what he knew about the affair to the former chief prosecutor of Vallo della Lucania, Alfredo Greco, but before being able to formalize his complaint to a Carabiniere who Greco himself fully trusted.
    Also according to the investigations, local Carabinieri Colonel Cagnazzo was allegedly involved in an activity to divert the investigation and cover up its findings, an alleged operation organized even before Vassallo was killed.
    The Camorrista, Ridosso, his companion told police some years later, reportedly told the other three arrested persons after the murder that "we have fixed the fisherman too," judicial sources said.
    Green-Left Alliance (AVS) co-leader Angelo Bonelli asked "why has it taken 14 years to arrest those responsible for the murder of Vassallo, a man of legality, an environmentalist, who loved his local area and always fought for it?" Bonelli said he wanted to know if the officers arrested had been "protected by higher-ups".
    Ex premier Giuseppe Conte, leader of the populist opposition 5-Star Movement (M5S), hailed the "breakthrough" in "(a) crime (that) was born from Vassallo's boundless love for his land and for the values ;;trampled by criminal clans, with the connivance of state officials".
    Vassallo's son Antonio told ANSA that he was pleased at the "turning point in the investigations" and recalled that his father had found out about the alleged drug trafficking "before many investigators".
    He said he now wanted to "see full light shed on those who slowed down the investigations into my father's assassination".
    Vassallo, who had an international reputation for his campaigns, was shot dead shortly before his 57th birthday and shortly after becoming mayor of Pollica for a fourth term.
    A member of the centre-left Democratic Party, in the past he had also been a provincial councilor in Salerno.
    In addition to the office of mayor, he also held the position of president of the Park Community, a consultative and proactive body of the Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park Authority, made up of 80 municipalities of Cilento and Vallo di Diano and eight mountain communities.
    He had been president of the Alento Monte Stella Mountain Community and president of the 'Slow Cities' in the world.
    In 2009 he promoted the proposal to include the Mediterranean diet among the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity; a proposal that was accepted by UNESCO on November 16, 2010, in Nairobi.
    Vassallo also founded the "Study Center for the Mediterranean Diet".
    Above all, he was known for his past as a fisherman and for his love of the sea and the land, which had always guided him in his work as an administrator.
    An environmentalist, beloved by his fellow citizens, he is also remembered for some unusual ordinances.
    In January 2010 he signed one that provided for a fine of up to a thousand euros for anyone caught throwing ash and cigarette butts on the ground.
    Vassallo was killed by nine shots from a 9mm pistol, fired at point-blank range. (ANSA).