Italy: Right-wingers sentenced for "anarchist" bomb
01 March 2000
Five people were sentenced for causing an explosion in front of the Milan police headquarters on 17 May 1973 (see Statewatch vol 9 no 2). Carlo Maria Maggi, head of Ordine Nuovo (New Order) and informer for the American CIA and Amos Spiazzi (a colonel in the Italian army who has been linked to the Rosa dei Venti coup plot), received life sentences. Gianadelio Maletti, former head of the Servizio Informazioni Difesa (SID, Defence Information Service), received a 15-year sentence for hiding and suppressing evidence. He was identified by prosecuting magistrate Grazia Pradella as the linchpin between state institutions and the neo-fascists who were responsible for the bomb.
The verdict marks a breakthrough in investigations into attempts by several elements including the military, American serect services, masons and local neo-fascists to destabilise the Italian state. Their plan envisaged the establishment of an authoritarian regime through the so-called "strategy of tension". The use of bombs, subsequently attributed to left-wing or anarchist groups, was instrumental in this strategy.
Material that came to light during the trial will be used in the trial of right-wingers in connection with the bomb exploded in Piazza Fontana in Milan in 1969. According to judge Antonio Lombardi, Interior Minister Mariano Rumor was then targeted for failing to call a state of emergency after the bombing, which killed 17 people. Rumor disbanded Ordine Nuovo, a fascist organisation founded by Pino Rauti in 1956, in November 1973 for "reconstituting the banned fascist party", after a trial in which 30 of its members received prison sentences.
The 1973 bombing occurred as a plaque was being unveiled in memory of police superintendent Luigi Calabresi, who was murdered in 1972. Calabresi was widely accused of the death of anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli, who officially committed suicide by jumping out of a window during an interrogation concerning the bomb in Piazza Fontana. The arrest of self-confessed "anarchist" Gianfranco Bertoli, who has always maintained that he carried out the bombing alone, appeared to confirm that anarchists had caused the explosion to avenge Pinelli. It later surfaced that Bertoli was employed by the Italian intelligence services and had links with right-wing groups.
Philip Willan "Puppet Masters: the political use of terrorism in Italy" Constable (London) 1991; Avvenimenti 19.3.00.