Piazza Fontana bombing
Encyclopedia
The Piazza Fontana Bombing was a terrorist
attack that occurred on December 12, 1969 at 16:37, when a bomb exploded at the headquarters of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura (National Agrarian Bank) in Piazza Fontana (some 200 metres from Duomo) in Milan
, Italy
, killing 17 people and wounding 88. The same afternoon, three more bombs were detonated in Rome and Milan, and another was found undetonated.
(born in 1928), an anarchist railway worker, died after falling from the fourth floor window of the police station where he was being held. Serious discrepancies existed in the police account, which initially maintained that Pinelli had committed suicide by leaping from the window during a routine interrogation session. Murder charges against Luigi Calabresi
(1937-72), one of the officers on duty at the time, and other police officials were dropped by the prosecutor (giudice istruttore) for lack of evidence, who decided that Pinelli's fall had been caused by loss of consciousness ("malore").
In 1972 Calabresi was murdered by left-wing militants in revenge, after which Adriano Sofri
and Giorgio Pietrostefani, former leaders of the far-left Lotta Continua
were sentenced for organizing, and members Ovidio Bompressi and Leonardo Marino were sentenced for carrying out Calabresi's assassination.
was also arrested after a taxi driver identified him as the suspicious-looking client he had taken to the bank that day. After his alibi was judged insufficient, he was held for three years in preventive detention
before being sentenced for the crime. Sixteen years later on appeal he was eventually exonerated after several miscarried trials.
Far-right Neo-fascist
organization Ordine Nuovo
, founded by Pino Rauti
, was then suspected. On March 3, 1972, Franco Freda
, Giovanni Ventura and Rauti were arrested and charged with planning the terrorist attacks of April 25, 1969 at the Trade Fair and Railway Station in Milan
, and the August 8 and August 9, 1969 bombings of several trains, followed by the Piazza Fontana bombing, but were acquitted and no-one was ever successfully prosecuted.
Several elements brought the investigators to the theory that members of extreme right-wing groups were responsible for the bombings:
In 1974 the trial was moved from Milan
to Catanzaro. On October 4, 1978 the police discovered that Freda had disappeared from his Catanzaro apartment. On February 23, 1979 he was pronounced guilty for the Piazza Fontana bombing and the court sentenced him to life imprisonment. On August 23, 1979 Freda was captured in Costa Rica
and extradited to Italy, after which several trials followed, and he was sentenced to 15 years of jail for "subversive association" on March 20, 1981, then acquitted on August 1, 1985 for lack of evidence.
In 1989, Stefano Delle Chiaie
was arrested in Caracas
, Venezuela
and extradited to Italy
to stand trial for his role in the bombing, but was acquitted by the Assise Court in Catanzaro in 1989, along with fellow suspect Massimiliano Fachini.
On June 20, 2001 Italian Ordine Nuovo
members Carlo Maria Maggi
(a physician), Delfo Zorzi
and Giancarlo Rognoni were all convicted, but their convictions were overturned in March 2004. Carlo Di Giglio received immunity from prosecution in exchange for his information.
On May 3, 2005 the last trial ended with no one found guilty of the bombing.
conducted an inquiry of its own on the events.. The results of this (and other) inquiries were found in a Red Brigades hideout in Robbiano di Mediglia (Italy) after a firefight with the Italian police (Carabinieri) on October 15, 1974, and remained however secret until 2000, when the "Commissione Stragi" of the Italian Parliament, investigating terrorism during the presidency of Giovanni Pellegrino
uncovered it.
The Red Brigades concluded that Pinelli had committed suicide because he had been somehow involved in handling the explosive material which was then used for the bombing.
in Brescia five years later, but did nothing to alert the Italian authorities or to prevent the attacks from taking place." It also alleged that Pino Rauti
(current leader of the MSI Fiamma-Tricolore party), a journalist and founder of the far-right Ordine Nuovo
(New Order) subversive organization, received regular funding from a press officer at the U.S. embassy in Rome. "So even before the 'stabilising' plans that Atlantic circles had prepared for Italy became operational through the bombings, one of the leading members of the subversive right was literally in the pay of the American embassy in Rome", the report says.
Christian Democrat
co-founder of Gladio (NATO's stay-behind
anti-Communist organization in Italy) Paolo Emilio Taviani
told investigators that the SID military intelligence service was about to send a senior officer from Rome to Milan to prevent the bombing, but finally decided to send a different officer from Padua in order to put the blame on left-wing anarchists. Taviani also alleged in an August 2000 interview to Il Secolo XIX
newspaper: "It seems to me certain, however, that agents of the CIA were among those who supplied the materials and who muddied the waters of the investigation."
Terrorism
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
attack that occurred on December 12, 1969 at 16:37, when a bomb exploded at the headquarters of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura (National Agrarian Bank) in Piazza Fontana (some 200 metres from Duomo) in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, killing 17 people and wounding 88. The same afternoon, three more bombs were detonated in Rome and Milan, and another was found undetonated.
Deaths of Giuseppe Pinelli and Luigi Calabresi
The Piazza Fontana bombing was initially attributed to anarchists. After over 80 arrests were made, suspect Giuseppe PinelliGiuseppe Pinelli
Giuseppe "Pino" Pinelli was an Italian railway worker and anarchist activist, who died in the custody of Italian police in 1969 after being arrested. Pinelli was a member of the Milan Circle "Ponte della Ghisolfa". He was also the secretary of the Italian branch of the Anarchist Black Cross...
(born in 1928), an anarchist railway worker, died after falling from the fourth floor window of the police station where he was being held. Serious discrepancies existed in the police account, which initially maintained that Pinelli had committed suicide by leaping from the window during a routine interrogation session. Murder charges against Luigi Calabresi
Luigi Calabresi
Luigi Calabresi , recipient of a gold medal of the Italian Republic for civil valor, was a commissioner of Italian police in Milan....
(1937-72), one of the officers on duty at the time, and other police officials were dropped by the prosecutor (giudice istruttore) for lack of evidence, who decided that Pinelli's fall had been caused by loss of consciousness ("malore").
In 1972 Calabresi was murdered by left-wing militants in revenge, after which Adriano Sofri
Adriano Sofri
Adriano Sofri is an Italian intellectual, a journalist and a writer.Former leader of the autonomist movement Lotta Continua in the 1960s, he was arrested in 1988 and convicted to 22 years of prison, having been found guilty of being the instigator of the murder of Luigi Calabresi, a police...
and Giorgio Pietrostefani, former leaders of the far-left Lotta Continua
Lotta Continua
Lotta Continua was a far left extra-parliamentary organization in Italy. It was founded in autumn 1969 by a split in the student-worker movement of Turin, which had started militant activity at the universities and factories such as Fiat...
were sentenced for organizing, and members Ovidio Bompressi and Leonardo Marino were sentenced for carrying out Calabresi's assassination.
Official investigations and trials
Anarchist Pietro ValpredaPietro Valpreda
Pietro Valpreda was an Italian anarchist, dancer and novelist. He was victim of a miscarriage of justice, sentenced to prison on charges of being responsible of the December 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing, before being cleared sixteen years later.Valpreda came from a poor working-class family in...
was also arrested after a taxi driver identified him as the suspicious-looking client he had taken to the bank that day. After his alibi was judged insufficient, he was held for three years in preventive detention
Preventive detention
Preventive detention is an imprisonment that is not imposed as the punishment for a crime, but in order to prevent a person from committing a crime, if that person is deemed likely to commit a crime....
before being sentenced for the crime. Sixteen years later on appeal he was eventually exonerated after several miscarried trials.
Far-right Neo-fascist
Neo-Fascism
Neo-fascism is a post–World War II ideology that includes significant elements of fascism. The term neo-fascist may apply to groups that express a specific admiration for Benito Mussolini and Italian Fascism or any other fascist leader/state...
organization Ordine Nuovo
Ordine Nuovo
Ordine Nuovo , full name Centro Studi Ordine Nuovo, "New Order Scholarship Center") was an Italian far right cultural and extra-parliamentary political and terrorist organization founded by Pino Rauti in 1956...
, founded by Pino Rauti
Pino Rauti
Giuseppe Umberto "Pino" Rauti is an Italian politician who has been a leading figure on the far right for many years...
, was then suspected. On March 3, 1972, Franco Freda
Franco Freda
Franco "Giorgio" Freda is one of the leading intellectuals of the post-war Italian far right. He has been accused of having personally contributed to the Piazza Fontana bombing.-Biography:...
, Giovanni Ventura and Rauti were arrested and charged with planning the terrorist attacks of April 25, 1969 at the Trade Fair and Railway Station in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, and the August 8 and August 9, 1969 bombings of several trains, followed by the Piazza Fontana bombing, but were acquitted and no-one was ever successfully prosecuted.
Several elements brought the investigators to the theory that members of extreme right-wing groups were responsible for the bombings:
- The composition of the bombs used in Piazza Fontana was identical to that of the explosives that Ventura hid in a friend's home a few days after the attacks.
- The timers were traced to a stock of 50 Diehl Junghans timers bought on September 22, 1969 by Franco Freda in a Bologna store. Freda later explained that he bought the timers for Mohamed Selin Hamid, an alleged agent of AlgeriaAlgeriaAlgeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
n secret services (whose existence has been denied by Algerian authorities) for the Palestinian resistance. IsraelIsraelThe State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
secret services declared that no timer of that kind has ever been used by Palestinian groups. - The bags where the bombs were hidden had been bought in a shop in Padua, the same city in which Freda lived, a couple of days before the attacks.
In 1974 the trial was moved from Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
to Catanzaro. On October 4, 1978 the police discovered that Freda had disappeared from his Catanzaro apartment. On February 23, 1979 he was pronounced guilty for the Piazza Fontana bombing and the court sentenced him to life imprisonment. On August 23, 1979 Freda was captured in Costa Rica
Costa Rica
Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....
and extradited to Italy, after which several trials followed, and he was sentenced to 15 years of jail for "subversive association" on March 20, 1981, then acquitted on August 1, 1985 for lack of evidence.
In 1989, Stefano Delle Chiaie
Stefano Delle Chiaie
Stefano Delle Chiaie is a neofascist Italian activist . He went on to become a wanted man worldwide, suspect to be involved in Italy's strategy of tension, but was acquitted. He was a friend of Licio Gelli, grandmaster of P2 masonic lodge...
was arrested in Caracas
Caracas
Caracas , officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela; natives or residents are known as Caraquenians in English . It is located in the northern part of the country, following the contours of the narrow Caracas Valley on the Venezuelan coastal mountain range...
, Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
and extradited to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
to stand trial for his role in the bombing, but was acquitted by the Assise Court in Catanzaro in 1989, along with fellow suspect Massimiliano Fachini.
On June 20, 2001 Italian Ordine Nuovo
Ordine Nuovo
Ordine Nuovo , full name Centro Studi Ordine Nuovo, "New Order Scholarship Center") was an Italian far right cultural and extra-parliamentary political and terrorist organization founded by Pino Rauti in 1956...
members Carlo Maria Maggi
Carlo Maria Maggi
Carlo Maria Maggi was an Italian scholar, writer and poet. Despite being an Accademia della Crusca affiliate, he gained his fame as an author of "dialectal" works in Milanese language, for which he is considered the father of Milanese literature...
(a physician), Delfo Zorzi
Delfo Zorzi
Delfo Zorzi, presently known as , is an Italian-born Japanese citizen accused of terrorism in his country of origin.-Biography:Delfo Zorzi/Roi Hagen was born in Arzignano, near Vicenza, Italy, on July 3, 1947, joined neo-fascist organization Ordine Nuovo in 1966, and later became head of the...
and Giancarlo Rognoni were all convicted, but their convictions were overturned in March 2004. Carlo Di Giglio received immunity from prosecution in exchange for his information.
On May 3, 2005 the last trial ended with no one found guilty of the bombing.
The Red Brigades
The Red BrigadesRed Brigades
The Red Brigades was a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organisation, based in Italy, which was responsible for numerous violent incidents, assassinations, and robberies during the so-called "Years of Lead"...
conducted an inquiry of its own on the events.. The results of this (and other) inquiries were found in a Red Brigades hideout in Robbiano di Mediglia (Italy) after a firefight with the Italian police (Carabinieri) on October 15, 1974, and remained however secret until 2000, when the "Commissione Stragi" of the Italian Parliament, investigating terrorism during the presidency of Giovanni Pellegrino
Giovanni Pellegrino
Giovanni Pellegrino is an Italian politician.Born in Lecce and a lawyer by profession, he was a Senator of the Republic from 1990 with the Italian Communist Party and the Democrats of the Left to 2001...
uncovered it.
The Red Brigades concluded that Pinelli had committed suicide because he had been somehow involved in handling the explosive material which was then used for the bombing.
Political theories of responsibility for the bombing
A 2000 parliamentary report published by the center-left Olive Tree coalition claimed that "U.S. intelligence agents were informed in advance about several right-wing terrorist bombings, including the December 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan and the Piazza della Loggia bombingPiazza della Loggia bombing
The Piazza della Loggia bombing was a bombing that took place on the morning of 28 May 1974, in Brescia, Italy during an anti-fascist protest which killed eight people and wounded over 90...
in Brescia five years later, but did nothing to alert the Italian authorities or to prevent the attacks from taking place." It also alleged that Pino Rauti
Pino Rauti
Giuseppe Umberto "Pino" Rauti is an Italian politician who has been a leading figure on the far right for many years...
(current leader of the MSI Fiamma-Tricolore party), a journalist and founder of the far-right Ordine Nuovo
Ordine Nuovo
Ordine Nuovo , full name Centro Studi Ordine Nuovo, "New Order Scholarship Center") was an Italian far right cultural and extra-parliamentary political and terrorist organization founded by Pino Rauti in 1956...
(New Order) subversive organization, received regular funding from a press officer at the U.S. embassy in Rome. "So even before the 'stabilising' plans that Atlantic circles had prepared for Italy became operational through the bombings, one of the leading members of the subversive right was literally in the pay of the American embassy in Rome", the report says.
Christian Democrat
Christian Democracy (Italy)
Christian Democracy was a Christian democratic party in Italy. It was founded in 1943 as the ideological successor of the historical Italian People's Party, which had the same symbol, a crossed shield ....
co-founder of Gladio (NATO's stay-behind
Stay-behind
In a stay-behind operation, a country places secret operatives or organisations in its own territory, for use in the event that the territory is overrun by an enemy. If this occurs, the operatives would then form the basis of a resistance movement, or would act as spies from behind enemy lines...
anti-Communist organization in Italy) Paolo Emilio Taviani
Paolo Emilio Taviani
Paolo Emilio Taviani was an Italian political leader, economist and historian of the career of Christopher Columbus....
told investigators that the SID military intelligence service was about to send a senior officer from Rome to Milan to prevent the bombing, but finally decided to send a different officer from Padua in order to put the blame on left-wing anarchists. Taviani also alleged in an August 2000 interview to Il Secolo XIX
Il Secolo XIX
Il Secolo XIX is an Italian newspaper published in Genoa, Italy, founded in March 1886, subsequently acquired by Ferdinando Maria Perrone in 1897 from Ansaldo.Is one of the first italian newspapers to be printed in colour....
newspaper: "It seems to me certain, however, that agents of the CIA were among those who supplied the materials and who muddied the waters of the investigation."
See also
- Operation GladioOperation GladioOperation Gladio is the codename for a clandestine NATO "stay-behind" operation in Italy after World War II. Its purpose was to continue anti-communist actions in the event of a shift to a Communist party led government...
- Years of lead (Italy)
- Accidental Death of an AnarchistAccidental Death of an AnarchistAccidental Death of an Anarchist is perhaps the best-known play by the Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo.- About the play :...
"Commissione Stragi" http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inchieste_di_Robbiano_di_Mediglia- Inquiry of the Red BrigadesRed BrigadesThe Red Brigades was a Marxist-Leninist terrorist organisation, based in Italy, which was responsible for numerous violent incidents, assassinations, and robberies during the so-called "Years of Lead"...
]
External links
- February 11, 1998 article from La RepubblicaLa Repubblicala Repubblica is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper. Founded in 1976 in Rome by the journalist Eugenio Scalfari, as of 2008 is the second largest circulation newspaper, behind the Corriere della Sera.-Foundation:...
, with links to the full text of the judiciary sentence and the full report from the Italian Commission on Terrorism - http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/12/newsid_3953000/3953999.stm On this day from BBC newsBBC NewsBBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...
December 12, 1969