Italy: Bombs in Rome
01 November 1999
Two rudimentary bombs were placed in symbolic locations in Rome on 23 and 26 November, causing widespread alarm but no injuries, one of the bombs did not explode. The first, in Via Tasso, exploded outside a museum commemorating the liberation from nazi occupation. It had been a nazi prison, interrogation and torture chamber in which several partisans lost their lives, run by Sipo (SS security police), from September 1943 until allied troops entered Rome nine months later. The second bomb, which failed to explode, was planted near the Nuovo Olimpia cinema, near the parliament, where "The Specialist", a film on the trial of nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, was showing. Both bombs were claimed by the previously unknown Movimento antisionista (anti-zionist movement), which issued crude anti-semitic remarks and a warning "We have struck behind the Parliament, symbol of zionist power, this time we have been merciful,....what we do next time will be worse."
Investigators have been focusing on right-wing groups, particularly Forza Nuova (FN), which have been recruiting among the supporters of Roma and Lazio, the capital's two football teams in the last few years. The FN is affiliated to the International Third Position and its leader, Roberto Fiore, was uncovered running "bogus" Catholic charities in Britain to finance and establish a racist village in Los Pedriches, Spain. Searches by the police and carabinieri in the houses of right-wing supporters' groups, skinheads and nazi-skins led to 96 arrests, with 59 persons charged for minor offences (drug-related, petty theft and robbery).
The first major breakthrough came in relation to the second bomb, as searches found gunpowder of the same type, along with bullets. Investigators are allegedly treating this bomb as a separate incident. They believe it was planted by someone who attended the Roma-Newcastle game on 25 November, and was looking to gain a reputation among his peers. The cigarette which left to burn the short fuse attached to the bomb failed to ignite the bomb. Investigators have examined the saliva and have read the bomber's DNA trace. Interior Minister Rosa Russo Jervolino has warned that the government views these intimidatory acts as "a single act ... it is careful to fit it into.. (a)... strategy of neo-nazi and anti-semitic tension".