Piazza Fontana bombing
The
Piazza Fontana bombing (
strage di Piazza Fontana) refers to the
terrorist bombing on
December 12 1969 in the offices of
Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura ("National Agrarian Bank") in Piazza Fontana,
Milan,
Italy, carried out by
far-right terrorists. In total, 16 people were killed and up to 90 were wounded. The aim of the attack was to make the public believe that the bombings were part of a
communist insurgency, in order to "push the Italian state to proclaim the
state of emergency", according to neofascist terrorist
Vincenzo Vinciguerra's confessions. This has been called in Italy
strategia della tensione.
The terrorist act was initially attributed to
anarchist bombers. Over 4,000 arrests were made in the aftermath of the bombings and one of the suspects,
Giuseppe Pinelli, died after falling out of the fourth floor window of the police station where he was being held.
[ ] Anarchist
Pietro Valpreda was also arrested and later released.
Far-right terrorist organization
Ordine Nuovo was then suspected. In
1989,
Stefano Delle Chiaie was arrested in
Caracas,
Venezuela and rendered to
Italy to stand trial for his role in this bombing. Despite his reputation, Delle Chiaie was acquitted by the Assise Court in
Catanzaro in
1989, along with fellow accused
Massimiliano Fachini. In 1998, David Carrett, officer of the
U.S. Navy, was put under investigation on charges of political and military espionage and his participation to the Piazza Fontana bombing, among other events. Judge Guido Salvini also opened up a case against Sergio Minetto, Italian official for the US-NATO intelligence network, and
pentito Carlo Digilio, who was suspected as a
CIA informant.
La Repubblica underlined that Carlo Rocchi, CIA's man at Milan, was surprised in 1995 searching for information concerning Operation Gladio, thus demonstrating that all was not over.
[ ("A US agent appears in the Piazza Fontana bombing") ]A
June 20 2001 conviction of Italian
Neo-fascists Doctor Carlo Maria Maggi,
Delfo Zorzi and Giancarlo Rognoni was overturned in March
2004.
Pentito Carlo Di Giglio received
immunity from prosecution in exchange of his informations, as the
pentito status allows.
*
Accidental Death of an Anarchist*
False flag*
Operation Gladio*
February 11, 1998 article from
La Repubblica, with links to the full text of the judiciary sentence and the full report from the Italian Commission on Terrorism
[
1] On this day from BBC news December 12th, 1969
