Five people were nabbed
Wednesday after he Palermo provincial secretary of the far-right
Forza Nuova (FN) group was tied up and bloodily beaten by
persons wearing ski masks or with their heads wrapped in scarves
in Palermo's central Via Dante Tuesday night.
Five 'antagonists' - anticapitalist and anarchist or leftist
youth squatters - including university students were reported to
have been taken to a police station on Wednesday.
Italy's DIGOS special security police was said to be weighing
two arrests in the case, sources said.
They said CCTV cameras had established that eight people were
involved in the attack.
Prosecutors are investigating on suspicion of attempted
murder, judicial sources said.
The FN provincial chief, tattoo salon owner Massimo Ursino,
was surrounded, tied hand and foot with duct tape and brutally
beaten, sources said.
Ursino suffered bruising to the face and the whole of his
body, a broken nose, and a suspected shoulder lesion, medical
sources said.
He was taken to the ER where doctors said his injuries would
heal in 20 days.
FN leader Roberto Fiore said "after a campaign of hatred sown
by the (newspaper) Espresso group and followed by all the left
including the Free and Equal (LeU) party, Communist hatred is
unleashed against Forza Nuova".
"A Forza Nuova official was struck at his workplace, tied up
and brutally beaten, in a cowardly way, in 10 against one".
The attack, which was condemned by all political parties, was
claimed by an unnamed lefist group which said it "repudiated
Fascism" and that Ursino had been given an "exemplary" beating a
few days ahead of a rally in Palermo by Fiore.
It said Italy was threatened by the "rise" of racist and
neo-Fascist groups.
photo: Fiore
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