The August 2 1980 bombing of
Bologna train station that killed 85 people was a "State
massacre," Bologna judges said Friday in explaining their life
term for a fourth member of the neofascist militant NAR group,
Gilberto Cavallini.
"It was a political massacre, or more accurately a State
massacre," said the Assize Court judges in their written
explanation.
They said that the view that the massacre had been carried out
by a gang of four acting alone was incorrect.
The Bologna massacre (Italian: strage di Bologna) was a
terrorist bombing of the Bologna Centrale railway station in
Bologna, Italy, on the morning of 2 August 1980, which killed 85
people and wounded over 200.
It was Italy's deadliest terrorist attack of the 25-year 'Years
of Lead' of rightist and leftist militant violence.
Several members of the neo-fascist terrorist organization Nuclei
Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR, Armed Revolutionary Nuclei) were
sentenced for the bombing, although the group denied
involvement.
Investigations have uncovered alleged links to Italy's secret
services.
NAR founders Francesca Mambro and Valerio Fioravanti were
sentenced to life imprisonment for the massacre, and Luigi
Ciavardini got 30 years.
Late subversive rightist para-Masonic Propaganda Due (P2) lodge
chief Licio Gelli was recently convicted of being among those
who commissioned the bombing.
Historians have seen the atrocity as part of a string of
rightist subversive bombings in the so-called strategy of
tension aimed at keeping the Communists out of national power.
Other rightist militants have been convicted in the case, as
well as the NAR members.
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