President Sergio Mattarella was in
Brescia on Tuesday to lead the commemorations for the 50th
anniversary of the Piazza della Loggia far-right militant
bombing that killed eight people and hurt another 102 on May 28,
1974.
In 2015, a court of appeal in Milan issued a final life sentence
to rightist militant Ordine Nuovo (New Order) members Carlo
Maria Maggi and Maurizio Tramonte for ordering the bombing,
closing one of the longest-running cases on terrorism during
Italy's 'years of lead' of rightist and leftist terror.
Currently two other Ordine Nuovo-linked former militants,
Roberto Zorzi and Marco Toffaloni, are on trial for actually
carrying out the bombing..
"Fifty years have passed since the cowardly attack in Piazza
della Loggia that killed eight people and wounded 102, some
seriously, with permanent injuries," Mattarella said at a
ceremony.
"Today the Italian Republic is Brescia, it is Piazza della
Loggia".
The head of State bemoaned the cover-ups that long denied
justice to the victims, as with other atrocities committed
during the 'years of lead'.
"From the Piazza Fontana massacre in 1969, to the Bologna (train
station) bombing in 1980, the greatest massacre of neo-fascist
terrorism, and again in 1984 in San Benedetto, there was a
shocking sequence of bloody events, linked by the single thread
of black (neo-Fascist) subversion and characterised by
difficulty in finding the historical and judicial truth,
hindered by unacceptable depredations, errors and
inefficiencies," Mattarella said.
"But the desire for truth and justice never stopped.
"Accomplices and colluders, the strategists of death, do not
represent the State, but pose a very serious threat to the
Republic.
"They betrayed Italy.
"They plotted in the shadows against their people and their
country.
"Faced with the violent war of opposing forms of terrorism -
black and red (leftist) - which, in that season of bloodshed and
bitter international conflict, tried to overthrow the Republic
and democracy, we can say today with certainty that the State,
the Republic, its people, with its authentic, loyal servants,
prevailed".
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