Italy: "Parallel" anti-terrorist unit run by fascists
01 May 2005
Inquiries conducted by judges in Genoa threw up a worrying discovery, in the shape of an unofficial self-styled anti-terrorist information unit, the
Dipartimento di Studi Strategici Antiterrorismo (DSSA, Department of Strategic Antiterrorist Studies), which has been operating since 26 March 2004. It is under investigation for usurping and using powers reserved for the judicial police to carry out investigations and surveillance operations targeting Muslims, as well as enjoying access to information held in the databases of law enforcement agencies, as a result of involvement in the organisation by members of the police,
carabinieri (Italy's paramilitary police force), the
Guardia di Finanza (customs and excise police) and the polizia penitenziaria (prison police). Giuseppe Pisanu, the interior minister, has suspended policemen involved in the network.
Twenty-eight searches were carried out in nine Italian regions on 1 July 2005, and three people were arrested, including the DSSA's two directors (Gaetano Saya and Riccardo Sindoca) and a former police officer who was detained for illegal possession of weapons. 24 persons were placed under investigation for "usurping public functions in the field of the investigation and prosecution of criminal activities", fraudulently seeking to obtain funding and illegally accessing personal data. The involvement of high ranking officials from the police and military is also being investigated.
Gaetano Saya, the founder and head of the centre, is a right-winger and founder of a party that split off from
Alleanza Nazionale (AN) when the current foreign affairs minister Gianfranco Fini, disowned fascism and renamed the
Movimento Sociale Italiano party AN. The website of Gaetano Saya's
Movimento Sociale Italiano - Destra Nazionale (MSI-DN) referred to Fini as having betrayed the party's tradition, and Saya was charged in November 2004 with "divulging information based on ideas of racial superiority" from his party's website.
Saya defended the legality of his organisation, which he claimed was composed of 150 members, arguing that the DSSA is a structure about whose existence the interior, defence and justice ministries, the Rome prosecutor's office, the secret services, the general command of the
Guardia di Finanza, US and Israeli embassies and SHAPE (the Nato high command in Europe) knew about. Inquiries are reportedly underway to ascertain whether the centre had any official backing. Saya describes the DSSA as an inter-force body created to surveil and evaluate the terrorist threat, particularly Islamic, something that was deemed necessary within NATO. It has applied for 32 million euros in funding from Brussels. It passed on the information it gathered to the Italian secret services (SISMI and SISDE), as well as to the media, and Saya argues that it uncovered "underground mosques" and is carrying out a study concerning "money laundering and financing of Al Qaeda through call centres, kebab shops and Islamic butchers." Several commentators, including interior minister Giuseppe Pisanu, dismissed the credibility of the information provided by the DSSA, which was the source for a number of the scares that were reproduced in newspapers concerning terrorist threats in Italy. Saya refused to answer questions asked by judges, invoking norms governing state secrets, although he promised to give the police the organisation's membership records, whereas Sindoca handed judges an 800-page file documenting the centre's activities.
Saya considers the judicial initiative against the DSSA's activities as sabotage, adding that "if fighting against Islamic terrorism means being part of a "deviated" service, then the DSSA is a deviated service". Carlo Taormina, a lawyer and MP for Berlusconi's
Forza Italia party, offered political backing to the DSSA by arguing that "we should be grateful to those who...sought to make up for the inabilit