"Popular British Holiday Spot Nicknamed 'Devil's Island' as 88 Dangerous Mafia Leaders and Terrorists Transferred to New Prison in Italy"

DOZENS of Italy’s most notorious criminals have been moved to a jail in a Brit holiday hotspot which has now been dubbed “Devil’s Island”.

The group of 88 infamous mafia bosses and feared terrorists has been sent to a new high security wing at Uta .

The criminals are among 746 inmates who are forced to follow Italy‘s strictest solitary confinement rules known as 41-bis.

Prisoners held under these terms are forbidden from talking to each other – limiting their ability to run gang operations from behind bars.

The crooks were transferred to the island via two ATR 42 jets owned by Italian .

Only eight or nine were allowed to board each flight at a time and cops separated them to prevent communication.

Sardinia’s governor Alessandra Todde complained about the move which she said posed a risk to the island’s safety.

The latest decision has nearly doubled the number of 41-bis prisoners in the island to 183 – about a quarter of the national total.

Todde said: “The government has moved in a unilateral and arrogant way, treating Sardinia like the Cayenne of Italy.”

The Cayenne – also nicknamed “Devil’s Island” – was run by France off the coast of French Guiana before being closed in 1953.

Earlier this year, hundreds of protesters swarmed the streets of Cagliari, the Sardinian capital, to demonstrate against the looming arrivals.

Todde warned the island’s jails are already understaffed – a factor which was magnified by the escape of a Puglia mafia boss from one of their jails in 2023.

Prisoners are being sent to Uta jail as part of a plan to concentrate inmates serving life sentences into a smaller number of jails, one prisoner officer told The Times.

He said the favoured them being sent to islands to keep them isolated.

The officer said: “We can’t send them to Sicily because many of them come from there in the first place.”

Italy‘s junior justice minister Alberto Balboni called Todde, who represents the opposition party, a hypocrite.

She said: “The new wing of Uta jail for these prisoners was ordered by a minister in a previous government who belonged to the [opposition] Five Star party.”

Balboni argued claims that families of mafia prisoners would move to Sardinia to be closer to their relatives were baseless.

She added: “They do not do this since you can only visit prisoners once a month for a few minutes.”

In the 1990s, Sardinia started to host more and more mob prisoners following a crackdown on Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia.

Many criminals were jailed on the small island of Asinara – nicknamed the Alcatraz of Italy – off Sardinia’s coast.

This included Raffaele Cutolo, a boss from Naples, and Salvatore “Toto” Riina, the head of Cosa Nostra.

Toto was linked to 150 killings and orchestrated the murder of anti-mafia officials Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992.

Asinara only saw one prisoner escape from its facilities during its 112 years of service before it closed in 1997.

The 41-bis system is designed to entice prisoners to give up mafia secrets in return for better living conditions.

Some groups have criticised the standard of living.

Inmates are locked in nine-square-metre cells for 23 hours per day – only being allowed 60 minutes outside for exercise in a tiny yard.

Conversations are closely monitored by prison guards who are familiar with codes used by mafia heads.

Officers also have to make sure bosses who mix don’t kill each other.

The prison source added: “You don’t want mafiosi from the same organisations together but if they are from opposing clans they might try to kill each other.”