ITALY: Right-wingers sentenced for another "anarchist" bomb
01 May 2001
Milan's second assizes found three right-wingers guilty of planting a bomb that exploded on 12 December 1969 in the Banca dell'agricoltura in central Milan. Delfo Zorzi, Carlo Maria Maggi and Giancarlo Rognoni received life sentences on 30 June 2001 for the bombing, which killed sixteen people and injured eighty-four in Piazza Fontana. It was the eighth trial held in relation to the massacre and confirms the suspicion of secret service involvement. Investigating magistrate Guido Salvini, responsible for re-opening the case in 1990, said that the Piazza Fontana bombing "was among the fundamental causes of the explosion of left-wing terrorism". Carlo Taormina, the justice ministry under-secretary from Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, who acted as defence lawyer for Delfo Zorzi, claimed the verdict was political, and that judges "have re-written history with a red pen". An appeal is likely.
Zorzi, who planted the bomb, was judged in absentia as he lives in Japan, where he runs a successful fashion business. His new name is Hagen Roy and he has acquired Japanese citizenship. Japan does not extradite its nationals and efforts by the last Italian government to extradite him have been in vain, although the guilty verdict may change his situation, if the Italian government presses for his extradition. Maggi, a doctor and leader of Ordine Nuovo (ON) in Veneto was ruled to be the organiser of the bombing. He has already served a four-year sentence for "reconstituting the fascist party", and received a life sentence on 11 March 2000 for instigating a bombing in front of the Milan police headquarters on 17 May 1973 which killed four people. The author of the police station bombing was Gianfranco Bertoli, a self-styled "anarchist" who was found to be employed by Italian the secret services, and to have links with right-wing groups (see Statewatch vol 9 no 2, vol 10 no 2). Maggi is unlikely to serve either of his two life sentences due to ill-health.
Veneto-born Giancarlo Rognoni, leader of the Milan neo-fascist group La Fenice also received a life sentence for giving logistical support to the perpetrators of the Banca dell'agricultura bomb. Stefano Tringali received a three-year sentence for aiding and abetting, whereas Carlo Digilio was the key witness in the trial, and the supplier of arms and explosives to the ON cell in Veneto at the time. He claims to have been a CIA informer and was acquitted for his part in the conspiracy as it was covered by the statute of limitations. Franco Freda and Giovanni Ventura were judged to have been party to the plot although they were not tried after being acquitted on appeal of the same crime in 1981. They had previously received life sentences in a trial in Catanzaro.
The bombings were part of a broader strategy overseen by the United States agencies and carried out by the Italian secret services, with the assistance of neo-nazis, to discredit Italy's Communist Party (PCI) and to undermine its electoral prospects. The so-called strategia della tensione (strategy of tension), was aimed at installing an authoritarian regime which would keep Italy within NATO's orbit. Ordine Nuovo was deeply infiltrated by the Italian and US secret services. Blaming the left for the bombs and covering up evidence were instrumental aspects of this strategy.
Guido Salvini described the role of the Americans as "ambiguous, halfway between knowing and not preventing and actually inducing people to commit atrocities." Vincenzo Vinciguerra is another witness, a former member of ON who is serving a life sentence for planting a bomb in Peteano on 31 May 1972, killing three carabinieri, and for other terrorist crimes. He is an unrepentant fascist who has not asked for any reduction in his sentence, but has spoken to investigators about former colleagues who he felt were linked to the secret services. He saw the Peteano bombing as a protest against secret service manipulation of fascist groups, and told magistrates t