A SET of leaked photographs has revealed the ease with which Mafia leaders in Italy continue running their affairs from jail.

The photographs show mob bosses leaning over partitions to whisper in visitors’ ears, passing on notes and ignoring limits on visitor numbers.

Aided by lax supervision by prison staff, bosses incarcerated in the high-security wing of Pagliarelli jail in Palermo can apparently pass on secret instructions to visiting relatives.

Michele Prestipino, Palermo’s anti-Mafia prosecutor, said: “These pictures are chilling and speak for themselves. If Mafia bosses in jail have no difficulty getting their orders out, our battle is lost from the start. The solution is quite simple. Constant and assiduous vigilance would be enough.”

Physical contact is supposed to be forbidden between visitors and Mafia inmates, and listening devices in the visitors’ room allow warders to monitor conversations.

But the pictures, published in La Repubblica yesterday, showed that the mafiosi treat these restrictions with disdain. A note held up to the glass partition then torn into fragments gets a message across. A gesture of affection, such as ruffling a child’s hair, can be used to conceal the passing of an envelope.

Pino Rizzo, 37, the bald man sitting on the right in the photos, is the Mafia boss in Trabia, east of Palermo. He was arrested in 2002 and has since been accused by his wife of at least one murder. The other two bosses sitting on the right are Rosolino Rizzo, his brother, and Salvatore Rinella.

The images were recorded by the prison’s closed-circuit television system on two days in March and investigators studied the tapes after Carmela Iuculano, Rizzo’s wife, turned state witness and told prosecutors how secret information was passed in and out of jail. Signora Iuculano, 32, also said that mafiosi use a strategy called “multiple visits” to circumvent limits on visitors.

Three or four family members with roles in the clan would sign up to speak to a prisoner of their choice at the same time as Signora Iuculano was to see her husband. The visitors all sat opposite their allotted prisoner.

After initial greetings, a game of musical chairs took place as the visitors swapped seats every few minutes. Rizzo could thus talk to several lieutenants as well as his official visitor, his wife.

The number of people, the movement and the simultaneous conversations all made it hard for warders to monitor what was going on.

The bosses in the pictures were not subjected to the toughest prison regime reserved for the very top mafiosi because they were not considered important or dangerous enough. If they had been, they would have been kept in isolation.

The Italian prison department has opened an inquiry to establish whether the prison officers were guilty of negligence or connivance.

Roberto Castelli, the Justice Minister, said that the pictures had highlighted certain irregularities, but accused La Repubblica of constructing a “scandal based on many inexactitudes”.

He said that the pictures had been taken in 2004 and used to demonstrate to prison authorities how an inmate was able to communicate with the outside world.

“Thanks to those pictures the detainee in question was then . . . put in a position where he could not continue his criminal work,” he said.

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