Image caption The script is said to be part of an oath-taking process 
 
 Police in Italy say they have deciphered a mysterious coded text that appears to reveal the details of a secretive mafia initiation process. 
 
 It was apparently written in a special alphabet devised by members of the 'Ndrangheta, a crime network based in the Calabria region of southern Italy. 
 
 The document was found during an investigation into a high-profile murder in Rome in January last year. 
 
 The 'Ndrangheta are said to be the biggest cocaine smugglers in Europe. 
 
 Rich in symbolism 
 
 "Finding such a document shows that even if they are projected towards big businesses and are a criminal group with a global presence, they still use archaic systems," said Renato Cortese, head of the police rapid response team in Rome. 
 
 The script is said to be part of the oath-taking process used when new members join a mafiosi clan known as the "San Luca". 
 
 "Its content is basically the formula that a person must recite to become part of the 'Ndrangheta," Mr Cortese said. 
 
 It was the first time such a document had been found in Rome, he added. 
 
 Three sheets of note paper, that carried a hand-written message, were discovered alongside weapons and ammunition. 
 
 Two policemen with a passion for crosswords spent weeks cracking the code, says the BBC's Rome correspondent Alan Johnston. 
 
 The letters looked like a mix of Arabic, Cyrillic and Chinese-type script, he says. 
 
 The document sheds a little light on the quasi-mystical aura that the mafiosi like to create when they take in new recruits, our correspondent adds. 
 
 The translated text is said to be rich in symbolism, and describes how to recognise a mafioso - a so-called "Man of Honour" - by the signs around him. 
 
 The 'Ndrangheta is now reckoned to be Italy's most powerful mafia, having overtaken Sicily's Cosa Nostra. The network operates across Europe and has connections with Colombian drug cartels. ||||| Lethal Cargo 
 
 Several hundred tons of Assad’s mustard gas, sarin, and VX nerve gases will be transferred from one ship to another Wednesday—in Gioia Tauro, a hub for the Calabrian mafia. 
 
 ROME, Italy — Gioia Tauro is one of the most dangerous port towns in all of southern Italy, but when 700 metric tons of Syrian chemical weapons and their precursors arrive there on Wednesday, it may briefly be perilous on an apocalyptic scale no one ever anticipated. 
 
 For one or two days, mustard gas and the active ingredients of sarin and VX nerve gases will be transferred slowly, delicately, from one ship to another in the port. The international agencies involved say there is no reason to worry about the pervasive presence of the Calabrian mafia known as ‘Ndrangheta in Gioia Tauro. They say the port handles hazardous materials 365 days a year. But the sensitivity of what’s going on there now is hard to overstate. 
 
 The good news is that the shipment marks the end—or almost—of the drama about Syria’s chemical weapons that began so horribly last August, when hundreds of men, women and children died in nerve gas attacks near Damascus. After U.S. President Barack Obama threatened military action and the Russians stepped in to mediate, Syrian President Bashar Assad agreed to declare all the chemical weapons he had and allow them to be destroyed. 
 
 The process of eliminating the arsenal was long, complicated, and risky in the middle of a country at war. But the special representative of the United Nations secretary-general and the experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) who took on the job are now satisfied that everything Assad said he had in his possession has been neutralized in Syria, put on board the Norwegian ship Taico, which is steaming toward a disposal facility in Texas, or, if it was really, really lethal stuff, loaded on the Danish ship Ark Futura, which is headed for Gioia Tauro. 
 
 What the U.N. team and the experts are not entirely sure about is whether Assad really did provide a complete inventory. In the course of collecting the weapons and their precursor chemicals from various sites around Syria and interacting with the authorities in Damascus, “discrepancies were identified in the initial declarations that Syria gave to us,” OPCW spokesman Michael Luhan told The Daily Beast. Luhan would not supply any details about what those discrepancies may be. 
 
 Intelligence from unspecified outside countries also has raised questions. (One might speculate it’s from Israel, but that’s just a calculated guess.) The team assigned to the mission by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has sought clarifications with trips not only to Syrian locations but to Iran. 
 
 Meanwhile, the destruction of the chemical weapons that were declared and located continues. On Wednesday, 560 of the 700 metric tons aboard the Ark Futura are to be transferred to the U.S. Navy ship Cape Ray, which will then sail out into international waters and spend about 60 days turning the weapons and their components into conventional industrial waste that will be disposed of, finally, by specialized companies in Germany and in Finland. 
 
 But before that happens, we have to hope nothing goes wrong in Gioia Tauro. The Italian government is closing off the port and claims that the work of transferring the chemicals, originally scheduled for two days, will now be done in one. 
 
 It is hard to imagine that the local crime bosses would see any reason to interfere with the operation or try to exploit it, but, then again, the ‘Ndrangheta is one of the most ruthless and one of the more imaginative crime syndicates around. 
 
 The whole city of Gioia Tauro on the Calabrian coast is a mass of illegally constructed buildings, some cobbled together from shipping containers. The city council has been dissolved a half-dozen times for corruption and mafia infiltration. At one point, more people were murdered in the town, which has a population of just over 17,000 people, than in New York City. In the 1970s, more than 1,000 people were killed in one year alone when the ‘Ndrangheta crime syndicate’s clans were fighting over lucrative contracts to build a state-of-the-art steel plant. The steel plant plans eventually were abandoned because of the ‘Ndrangheta infiltration. 
 
 According to Italy’s Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission, more than 80 percent of Europe’s cocaine is handled by the ‘Ndrangheta, and much of it enters the continent through this badly patrolled port. In February 2014, seven people affiliated with the Gambino crime family were arrested in New York and 17 in Gioia Tauro in a sting operation that averted plans to smuggle cocaine in frozen fish and pineapple crates to the United States. Gioia Tauro is also a hub for the illegal arms trade. 
 
 If the officials involved with the chemical weapons shipment are worried about the criminal surroundings, they are not showing it. According to Pentagon press secretary Navy Rear Admiral John Kirby, there is no danger that the chemical weapons could spill into the sea. “Neutralization will be conducted in a safe and environmentally sound manner,” Kirby said in a statement. “Nothing from this operation will be released into the environment.” ||||| Rocco Morabito, one of Italy’s most-wanted mafia bosses, slipped up by enrolling daughter at local school under real name 
 
 'Cocaine king of Milan' arrested in Uruguay after 23 years on the run 
 
 After 23 years on the run, one of Italy’s most wanted mobsters – the so-called “cocaine king of Milan” – has been arrested at a hotel in Uruguay. 
 
 Uruguayan and Italian authorities said Rocco Morabito, 50, a fugitive boss of Italy’s most powerful organised crime group, the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta, had been living with false papers in the southern coastal resort of Punta del Esta for more than a decade. 
 
 Uruguayan police said Morabito, the target of an international arrest warrant since 1995, was detained after a six-month investigation that was triggered after he enrolled his daughter at a local school under his own name. 
 
 Morabito, who obtained Uruguayan papers after presenting a false Brazilian passport in the name of Francisco Capeletto, was arrested on Monday at a luxury hotel in Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital, along with his wife, reportedly an Angolan national. 
 
 Mafia bosses caught in Italian police raid on mountain hideout Read more 
 
 A search of his properties uncovered 13 mobile phones, 12 bank cards, two cars, 150 passport-sized photos of him in various guises plus a Portuguese passport, a quantity of jewels, about $50,000 (£38,500) in cash and a 9mm pistol, the Uruguayan interior ministry said. 
 
 
 
 In a statement, Marco Minniti, Italy’s interior minister, congratulated Italian and Uruguayan police for a joint operation that resulted in the apprehension of “the No 1 fugitive” from the ‘Ndrangheta. 
 
 Sentenced to 30 years in prison in Italy, Morabito had been sought by police since 1994 after attempting to import almost a tonne of cocaine, worth 13bn lire (£6m), into Italy from Brazil, according to the Corriere della Sera newspaper. 
 
 Also suspected of transporting the drug to Milan from elsewhere in the country, he was wanted on charges of belonging to a criminal organisation devoted to international drug trafficking, the Italian interior ministry said. 
 
 Thought to have arrived in Uruguay in 2002, Morabito has has been leading “a normal life” since 1994 and has not engaged in any criminal activities since, his lawyer told Italian media. 
 
 Pending a formal Italian extradition request, he will be held in Uruguay for at least the next three months for false papers and identity theft, the Uruguayan interior ministry said. 
 
 Federico Cafiero de Raho, chief prosecutor for the Calabria region, said Morabito had played “a major role” in cocaine trafficking between South America and Milan, a distribution point for the drug to be sold elsewhere. 
 
 He described Morabito as “a key figure” in the ‘Ndrangheta mob, which controls a large part of the world’s cocaine trade. 
 
 Italian prosecutors have suggested the organisation tries to ensure the size and quality of its cocaine deals live up to dealer expectations by placing top gang bosses in Latin American so they can be closer to the drug’s producers. 
 
 The arrest ticks off one of the Italian interior ministry’s top five list of most wanted organised crime bosses, which also includes the Sicilian mafia boss Matteo Messina Denaro. 
 
 Last year Italian anti-mafia police caught two other fugitive ’Ndrangheta bosses after discovering them “living like animals” in a mountain hideout stocked with an arsenal of weapons. 
 
 Giuseppe Ferraro, 47, and Giuseppe Crea, 37, both high-ranking members of the organisation, had been on Italy’s list of most dangerous fugitives. Ferraro, convicted of a string of brutal murders, had been on the run for 18 years. Crea, wanted for mafia association and extortion, disappeared 10 years ago.
– "For the baptism, five people are needed—no more and no less," reads the coded instructions. But this "baptism" isn't the usual sort: It's for new members of the 'Ndrangheta crime syndicate in Italy, reports the Telegraph. Police discovered the instructions during a murder investigation, and two officers who like to solve puzzles got busy deciphering the text, which resembles ancient Egyptian and Greek. The big break came when they figured out the letter C, and the rest fell into place. It's oh-so-dramatic stuff: The initiation must take place in a "sacred, sacrosanct, and secure" location, and the newbie must cut his skin with a knife in order to swear a blood oath—"an eternal allegiance to the honored society.” The BBC reports that the 'Ndrangheta is thought to be the most powerful mafia in Italy, with a specialty in cocaine smuggling. "Finding such a document shows that even if they are projected towards big businesses and are a criminal group with a global presence, they still use archaic systems," says a police official in Rome. (The syndicate apparently isn't a fan of the new pope.)