French former mafia boss shot dead on highway

A former local mafia boss died Wednesday after he was shot in his car in the middle of a busy highway near the French city of Grenoble, local authorities and sources close to the case said.

Jean-Pierre Maldera, 71, died of his wounds after the shootout on Wednesday morning, the civil defence and the regional prosecutor's office said.

Maldera was one of the so-called "godfathers" of the Franco-Italian mafia that terrorised the southeastern city in the 1980s, along with his brother Robert, according to a source close to the case.

Robert Maldera, nicknamed "Il pazzo" ("The madman" in Italian), had gone missing aged 55 in 2015, the source added.

A prosecutor at the time said there was good reason to believe he had been killed.

Both brothers had been jailed in 2004 in a case of alleged extorsion, money laundering and procuring sex workers, but were then released the following year due to a technical flaw that scuppered the case.

According to another source following the investigation, Jean-Pierre Maldera was shot from another car that then drove off.

Videos circulating online showed a white car stopped in the middle of the highway, its driver's window shattered.

Le Dauphine Libere, a local newspaper, reported three to four gunmen carrying automatic weapons and riding in a stolen vehicle shot at him as he was driving, then gunned him dead as he tried to escape his car on foot.

Their vehicle's scorched remains were found shortly afterwards in a carpark a few kilometres (miles) away, it said.

An AFP photographer saw the blackened ground of the parking lot after police removed what was left of the vehicle.

The so-called "Maldera clan" to which Jean-Pierre and Robert belonged was dismantled in 1984. At the time, their father was found to own around one million French francs in treasury bonds.