Mafia bosses brought a Sicilian city to a standstill and forced shops to close for a mobster’s funeral procession – sparking a furious backlash across Italy. 

Shopkeepers and traders in Palermo’s biggest market were enraged after they were forced to lower their shutters ‘in a sign of mourning’ as the funeral procession carrying the coffin of mobster Emanuele Rubino passed through. 

Footage showed Mr Rubino’s coffin being carried down the Sicilian capital’s Via Maqueda avenue by men wearing white T-shirts with his face printed on them. 

Supporters on scooters rode alongside the casket to pay their final respects as they lit up fireworks and flares. 

Mr Rubino, 36, was linked to the Sicilian mafia, known as Cosa Nostra, and was notorious for extorting migrant business owners on the island. 

He served time in prison over the attempted murder of 21-year-old Gambian migrant Yusupha Susso in 2016, but had recently been transferred to house arrest for medical reasons. 

He died earlier this month from health complications. 

The scenes on Monday angered locals, with several taking to social media to denounce the procession. 

Footage shows mob boss Emanuele Rubino’s coffin being paraded as his supporters walk alongside him 

Shopkeepers say they were forced to close their shutters as the procession paraded through

The mob boss’s supporters rode alongside the casket in scooters to pay their final respects

Mob boss Emanuele Rubino died earlier this month from health complications

One wrote on X: ‘Funeral for the mob boss: a procession through Palermo with full honours. Shops shuttered out of “respect”… The prefect and police chief are nowhere to be found. Don’t they consider this a problem? What message are you sending to the people of Palermo?’

Another said: ‘Was there no one to stop THE MOB BOSS’S FUNERAL?

‘This is Sicily. Unless the ties between civil society and this criminal underworld are severed—ties built on culture, fear and, above all, mutual self-interest (and it remains to be seen whether the institutions will ever have the will and the courage to do so)— it will remain a lost land.’

Palermo’s Mayor Roberto Lagala condemned the procession, saying: ‘Our city cannot accept that entire areas of its city are behaving in a way that makes citizens feel they cannot live in safety and freedom.’

He added that police ‘immediately took action and prohibited the procession from continuing’ as soon as they were notified. 

The Cosa Nostra, the real-life Sicilian crime syndicate depicted in the Godfather movies, is made up of a coalition of criminal organisations – called ‘families’ or ‘clans’.

They engage in extortion, smuggling, gambling and the mediation of disagreements between other criminals.

One of their most infamous and ruthless mafia bosses, Matteo Messina Denaro, died of colon cancer in 2023, aged 61, just eight months after he was captured by police after having spent 30 years on the run for murdering 50 people, including a boy whom he dissolved in acid. 

He once boasted that he could fill a cemetery with the people he had killed.