Vincenzo Vinciguerra
Vincenzo Vinciguerra was a member of
Avanguardia Nazionale ("National Vanguard"), a far-right
terrorist organization founded by
Stefano Delle Chiaie and involved in Italy's
strategy of tension promoted by
Gladio networks.
Vincenzo Vinciguerra is serving a life-sentence for the murder of three policemen by a
car bomb in
Peteano in
1972, for which the
Red Brigades were long thought of having carried out. The
C4 explosive used in the bombing came from a
Gladio arms dump located beneath a cemetery near
Verona, revealed to judges
Felice Casson and Carlo Mastelloni by
Giulio Andreotti, former Prime minister of Italy.In
1984, questioned by judges about the
1980 Bologna station bomb in which 82 died and for which two secret services agent were convicted, Vinciguerra said: "With the massacre of Peteano, and with all those that have followed, the knowledge should by now be clear that there existed a real live structure, occult and hidden, with the capacity of giving a strategic direction to the outrages." The structure, he said, "lies within the state itself". "There exists in Italy a secret force parallel to the armed forces, composed of civilians and military men, in an anti-Soviet capacity - that is, to organise a resistance on Italian soil against a Russian army...". Vinciguerra explained how the
Italian secret services had protected him, helping him flying away to
Francoist Spain. However,
Gladio stopped protecting him as soon as he started talking, which permitted his subsequent trial .
Vinciguerra also made this statement to
The Guardian : "The terrorist line was followed by camouflaged people, people belonging to the security apparatus, or those linked to the state apparatus through rapport or collaboration. I say that every single outrage that followed from 1969 fitted into a single, organised matrix...
Avanguardia Nazionale, like
Ordine Nuovo (the main right-wing terrorist group active during the 1970s), were being mobilised into the battle as part of an anti-communist strategy originating not with organisations deviant from the institutions of power, but from within the state itself, and specifically from within the ambit of the state's relations within the
Atlantic Alliance." [
1]. Along with Stefano Delle Chiaie, he testified in
Rome in
December 1995 before judge
Maria Servini de Cubria that Enrique Arancibia Clavel (a former Chilean secret police agent prosecuted for
crimes against humanity in
2004 [
2]) and US expatriate
DINA agent
Michael Townley were directly involved in Chilean General
Carlos Prats' assassination in
Buenos Aires (Argentina).[
3].
# [
4] and [
5] Research project directed by
Daniele Ganser (see
Gladio notes)
*
Daniele Ganser, "Terrorism in Western Europe: An Approach to NATO's Secret Stay-Behind Armies" in Winter/Spring 2005
Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations [
6].
*
Mariano Rumor (in an interview, Vincenzo Vinciguerra declared that he was asked to kill Mariano Rumor)
*
Intervista a Vincenzo Vinciguerra, July 8, 2000, by Gigi Marcucci and Paola Minoliti
