A Massacre to Remember - The Bologna Train Station Bombing, Twenty-Five Years Later

Author: Laura Picci

 

The 2nd of August is a sad day, here in Bologna, at least for those who still remember or force themselves to remember. Twenty-five years ago the city was the ‘location’ for a tragic event that changed for ever the lives of hundreds of people, an event organised and then covered up by hidden forces, an event that was considered for years the worst terrorist attack in both Italy and Europe, until the more recent cruel events of Madrid.

Three Monkeys Online decided to publish this article, in which we run through the last quarter of a century, in its Current Affairs section, not in History, for two reasons that are of vital importance. The first is because there are numerous aspects of this affair that remain obscure. There are people condemned as the physical perpetrators of the attack, and others convicted of obstructing justice. The first group have always claimed their innocence, despite admitting other murders. The second group, officials of the Italian secret service, and members of the secret P2 organisation, were believed to be the actual mandators of the attack and to be behind its arrangement, but the investigation into their role, motives, and connections with other parts of the body politic however have, to use an expression coined , run into a 'rubber wall'. That is to say, there is still a mystery surrounding who sent the bombers, and for what purpose.

The other reason to consider a massacre twenty-five years old as current, is the inevitable comparisons that in these months are made between the post 9/11 world and that of Italy during the ‘Lead Years’ [Translator’s note: literal translation of the Italian expression Anni di Piombo, i.e. the period from 1969 to the end of the ‘80s, that according to others stretched until 1994], during the so-called ‘strategy of tension’. What can be learned from the Bologna bombing? Can lessons be applied to the current 'war-on-terror'?

The Massacre: a bomb shakes Bologna’s central station on the first saturday of August, 1980

It’s almost unbearably hot during the summer in Bologna. It’s humid, and one can’t find a cool refuge even under the marvellous porticoes of this medieval city. The city becomes a ghost town: shops and bars close their shutters, lawyers, doctors, and office workers go to the seaside or to the mountains, or to the countryside villa in the hills, students and professors of the Alma Mater University have finished their summer exams and take a break to recover before the autumn term; even the mayor is on holidays.

At 10.25 a.m. on the 2nd of August 1980, a bomb explodes in the heart of the Emilian capital, the nerve centre of the entire north east, and some would hazard of the whole peninsula: the packed train station of Bologna, a hub – said by many to be the most important in Italy, or at least one of the most crowded – through which pass thousands of people, heading to the holiday resort of their choice, emigrants returning to their birthplaces, people coming and going, waiting for connections. A huge station that employs railway workers, not to mention porters, barmen, newsagents, transport police, taxi drivers….

Seventy-six victims initially, and hundreds injured, amongst whom are the gravely injured whose deaths will bring the final grisly balance, in the autumn of that year, to eighty-five. A whole wing of the station, which includes restaurants, offices, an underpass, and a train stopped by the platform, are devastated by the explosion (the bomb was hidden in an abandoned suitcase that was left in the second class waiting room).

The emergency services: the immediate mobilisation of the city

Bologna the learned, Bologna the fat, but also Bologna the hard-working and generous: the dismay, the fear, the uncertainty of those first moments don't halt the Bolognese who arrange the first emergency services in the big station square devastated by the blast. From the first moments in fact, the survivors can count on help from courageous volunteers, followed in turn by firemen, policemen and health workers, that dig through the rubble organizing the rescue work and the transport of the dead and injured, offering help and solidarity. Doctors on holiday return voluntarily to work, other medics hurry to cover the shifts of their colleagues still on holidays or overloaded with work, taxis and buses double as ambulances, into which hundreds of the injured survivors collapse. A bus, the number 37, is used to transport the dead, a red coloured hearse that weaves back and forth between the station and the mortuaries in Via Irnerio and the various hospitals of the city.

The people of Bologna, and their administration, react quickly to the shock, to the point of giving the impression that there was already an emergency plan, as illustrated by the later statement of the Mayor of Bologna during this period, Renato Zangheri, “…it was unanimously judged as being very effective [...] a government in Northern Europe asked us for our plan because they found it so effective, but I repeat, there wasn’t one. It was limited to coordination work.”

A year later the Gold Medal of the Republic for civilian bravery was conferred on the city, ‘for its timeliness and efficiency in saving numerous lives”, as the official recognition reads.

The search for justice: from the initial investigations to the arrests and sentencing

The first hypothesis was that the blast was an accident, caused by a boiler in the station restaurant. Even in the course of the morning though, the more sinister explanation of a bomb was being outlined, and thus a deliberate and organised massacre. The first confirmation came by lunch time: the press agency Ansa released a statement according to which “At 13.46 a male voice, perhaps recorded, said: 'This is NAR; we claim responsibility for the attack on Bologna Train Station. Honour to comrade Mario Tuti’”. Nar (Armed Revolutionary Squads) are a right wing group who, without being an actual organisation or political force, had taken fascist ideology as its own, was based on the principle of violence and of revolutionary force, and was also close to various criminal organisations such as the Banda della Magliana, connected itself with Cosa Nostra. The telephone call would later be revealed to be fake, originating from the Florence office of the SISMI [Italian Secret Service]. During the day other claims of responsibility are received, including one allegedly from the left-wing Brigate Rosse [Red Brigades]. From the outset the authorities investigating receive claims and counter-claims from anonymous sources. Investigating Magistrate, Libero Mancuso, will later comment that "no other investigation has ever been subjected to so many diversions, so many attempts to distance the investigating magistrates from the truth, as that of the investigation into the attack on Bologna". Confirmation that the explosion was caused by a bomb is received when a crater is uncovered, in the remnants of the 2nd class waiting room, typical of that produced by explosives.

There are various elements that indicate a neo-fascist origin for the attack [information provided by imprisoned neo-fascists; documents obtained by DIGOS, the investigative branch of the Italian Police, that outline the political strategy for terrorism; the murder of investigating magistrate Giuliano Amato the previous june, who had been investigating Nar and possible attacks]. The first arrest warrants are issued, and various neo-nazi ‘personalities’ are arrested, many of whom later prove to be innocent of the massacre. Part of the investigation is transferred from Bologna to Rome in the spring of 1981. In the meantime Giuseppe Valerio (Giusva) Fioravanti and Sergio Piccafuocco are arrested, accused of having participated in the massacre. Later Francesca Mambro and Massimiliano Fachini are also arrested. The four will be condemned to life imprisonment for the massacre on the 11th of July 1988, sentences which will be completely quashed in a court of appeal two years later: all absolved. This sentence from the appeal court will in turn be overruled by the Supreme Court in 1992 where the life sentences for Mambro, Fioravanti and Picciafuoco are upheld. Fachini though is cleared at this stage. Three years and three appeals later, Picciafuoco will also be cleared definitively. Other suspects will be condemned for being members of an armed group.

In ‘86, another member of Nar, Luigi Ciavardini, a minor at the time of the massacre, becomes involved in the investigation and is accused of being one of the perpetrators. Being 17 at the time of the attack, his case follows a different path, and, for reasons that are not entirely clear, he has to wait until January 2000 before the Juvenile Court of Bologna clears him of charges. His trial though doesn’t end here, and on the 9th of March 2002 he is finally recognised as the third physical perpetrator of the Bologna massacre. Ciavardini is sentenced to thirty years in jail.

Mambro and Fioravanti (who mix work and pleasure, one could cynically suggest, as they are loyal and inseparable companions in the subversive struggle as well as long-term sweethearts, married in ’85 and delighted parents) are also condemned for various other criminal episodes, including armed robbery, murder, assault, illegal possession of weapons, theft, possesion and sale of stolen goods, personal injury, subversive association, for which they collect 8 life sentences and almost 85 years in jail for her, 7 life sentences and almost 135 years in jail for him, though they to this day declare themselves to be innocent of the Bologna massacre. According to their alibi, [which is initially confused (Fioravanti placed himself in Treviso on the 2nd of August, before correcting himself that he had continued on to Padova)] that August morning they found themselves on the run in Padova, where they met one of their ‘colleagues’ in Nar, a certain Gilberto Cavallini, who in turn had an appointment with a big name in both the neo-fascist movement and the secret services, Carlo Digiliio. Thus we begin to enter into the higher echelons, the hidden world of secret organisations, and those who run them… [Their alibi, though is impossible to prove. Cavallini's companion denies the presence of Mambro and Fioravanti, and then later corrects herself. At the same time, a criminal associate, Massimo Sparti testifies that Mambro and Fioravanti had come to him in Rome on the 4th of August, looking for forged documents. In conversation, according to Sparti, they tell him that they were at the train station on the morning of the 2nd of August, and that they were worried that someone might recognise Mambro].

Before leaving those who, at least according to the Courts, were the executors of the attack that murdered 85 people, it’s well to remember, regardless of the multiple sentences they’ve earned, and their own admission of guilt for many of the actions that have brought them to jail, Francesca Mambro and Giusva Fioravanti are, today, able to stroll on the seashore, write articles, editorials, books, participate in conventions (they were invited to address the new youth wing of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia earlier this year, until a public outcry forced a retraction), go shopping, eat in restaurants, and pontificate about divine forgiveness as semi-free citizens (In total they have served less than two months in prison for each victim killed).

And Ciavardini? He has always said he was with the other two on the 2nd of August, he was accused by the testimony of a police informer, friends/lovers of informers, and his affiliation with Nar played a role in his trial. He has recently written a book in the form of an interview given to a freelance journalist from Rome. Ciavardini also has always professed his innocence, and his legal position was slightly revised in 2004 when the Criminal Appeals court confirmed his sentence for membership of an armed group but put in doubt his physical participation in the Massacre.

The Search for Justice Pt2: the obstruction of justice, the secret services and P2

Nar have been described as a spontaneous movement, a name behind which could be hidden almost any type of terrorist activity arising from the ‘black’ [Editor's note: Fascist activity in Italy is labelled black, due to the blackshirts of Mussolini - while left-wing activity is described as red] matrix of right wing armed revolution and violence. It was a bit like a ‘70’s franchise of the earlier Squadrismo, the fascist paramilitary squads. Could a paragon be suggested in our own period with the claims of responsibility from Al Qaeda? We’ll leave it to the experts in international terrorism to decide that. What should be said, though, is that in the investigations of various episodes claimed by Nar, including that of the bomb of 2nd August 1980, lots of other organisations came to light, organisations which, while not proven, were highly suspected of collusion with the Nar and ‘black’ violence of those years.

As stated in the report of the Parliamentary Commission on Terrorism, “the Nar continued [...] to constitute a name to which a much larger group could refer, and in individual acts of delinquency, time and again, militants from other groups were involved. Because of the lack of a clear division it is necessary to sometimes take into consideration the same criminal episodes in relation to different groups. This explains the partial overlapping of accusations against groups in different trials”. This helps explain how complex the task of discovering the truth was. To capture more fully the atmosphere of this period, one has to go back to 1969, which is generally agreed to have been the start of the 'strategy of tension'. From that year onwards, in Italy occur numerous attacks, claims of responsibility, merciless executions, by the hands of subversive groups, more or less organised, who take their inspiration from the ideology of the extreme right or left.

But what is meant by ‘obstruction of justice’, and who benefited, and unfortunately, continue to benefit from it? These false leads were attempts, often successful, to deliberately muddy the waters, to deviate the investigations, to throw up false suspects, divert and distract attention from those close to the truth. A first attempt, perhaps sincere, is the hypothesis that the explosion is an accident, a malfunctioning boiler. Then there is the attempt to suggest that the bomb had gone off accidentally, or that the explosive material in the suitcase was destined for another use, and was just passing through Bologna. Over the years the false leads have included links to French, Palestinian, German, Libyan, or Spanish groups in an international dance of lies and false accusation that makes the head spin and cause shivers of terror and rage.

Licio Gelli, Francesco Pazienza, General Musumeci and Colonel Belmonte are charged and found guilty, of the offence (because it is a criminal offence when false information and accusations are deliberately offered in an attempt to cover-up the real culprits) of obstruction of justice. In 2000, Massimo Carminati (a right-wing extremist), Federigo Manucci Benincasa (the ex-director of the Florence branch of SISMI, part of the Italian secret service), and Ivano Bongiovanni (a common criminal) are charged with the same offence. The first four, in particular, are claimed to be members of P2 (Propaganda 2, a secret Masonic lodge counting politicians, members of the military, bankers, journalists, and members of the secret service amongst its members –including Silvio Berlusconi). Licio Gelli is head of P2 and Musumeci and Belmonte, high officials of the secret services, are certainly linked with the organisation. Pazienza deserves a paragraph to himself, as an extremely mysterious figure working in close collaboration with both the Italian secret service and that of other governments (including the CIA it has been suggested), with contacts in diverse areas of influence, including the Vatican, earning him the title of ‘facciendiere’ or the ‘fixer’. It's he who suggests the cover that the attack is a neo-nazi work involving Italian, French and German terrorists, and also he who plans, along with officials of SISMI, one of the famous false leads that is uncovered by investigating magistrates, that of a suitcase full of explosives and false documents, recovered from a train in Bologna’s train station on the 13th of January 1981. It’s discovery lends credence to the theory of an international group behind the attack. Three years later it emerges that the suitcase has been placed on the train by a low ranking official of the Carabinieri, Italy’s military police, with the clear intent of confusing the investigation in hand.

State Secrecy (or the secrets of the State): the plotters and the significance of all this death and destruction.

Also playing a part in the obstruction of the investigation is the so-called ‘State secrecy': a law that obliges public officials, and public employees (thus for example, the secret services, high positions of State, commanders of the army, civil servants) to keep confidential decisions, orders and directives that pertain to national security. Which includes, it is argued, the massacre of the 2nd of August 1980 .... there were sentences handed down for the Bologna attack, the physical perpetrators were identified and some of the people involved in the obstructuin of justice were condemned. There remains however the mystery of the political significance of the bomb: ‘simply’ a right wing bomb against an notoriously left-wing city? An attack that formed part of the infamous ‘strategy of tension’ which aimed to justify an authoritarian state (as outlined in the document ‘the plan for the re-birth of democracy’, found amongst P2 documents seized by police investigating Gelli in connection with the Banca Ambrosiana scandal)? A fascist attack, or a State inspired attack? Or really a thread in an international plan?

There are other important missing pieces, preventing a complete picture of the attack: why the determined and precise efforts to confuse the investigation? Were SISMI, P2 working to protect themselves, or someone above them? Who were the real plotters behind the massacre? State secrecy or a type of official omertà?