On the morning of 2 August 1980, an explosive of tremendous force exploded at the Bologna railway station, tearing down part of the building and killing more than 80 people, and injuring more than 200 – this is the only fact that everyone agrees to. Everything else is unclear: are fascists and masoni guilty, as the authoritative version says? How many people truly died? And first of all... was that actually an assassination?
Guilty fascists?
A massive detonation at the station in Bologna occurred at 10:25 p.m. on 2 August 1980, and already a day later, even before the investigation began, the then Prime Minister, Francesco Cossiga, announced that he was “fascists”. Thus began a long and confusing search for the guilty, but limited only to the area of the right, resulting in Valerio Fioravanti and Francesca Mambro, leader of the far-right Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (the Armed Revolutionary Cells). They were arrested in February 1981 and eventually, as a consequence of a trial which began in 1987, convicted as the perpetrator of the assassination. In addition to these, 2 more NAR terrorists, Luigi Ciavardini and Gilberto Cavallini, were convicted by a final conviction in connection with the Bologna bombing. However, this was not the finale of the full story, as a full of 5 trials took place between 1987 and 2024, in which many another people were convicted, including alleged terrorist leaders from the Masonic Propaganda 2 (called P2) lodge.
However, this authoritative version raises many doubts. Firstly, NAR was a tiny terrorist organization, composed of only a twelve permanent members, whose activities consisted mainly of carrying out robberies, threatening political opponents, and carrying out 33 murders of police, judges and journalists. The attack on a massive scale did not correspond either to the objectives or methods of the NAR, and the defendants themselves, who admitted to terrorist activity, inactive keep that they had nothing to do with the Bologna explosion.
And indeed no of the witnesses questioned remembered the man dressed in this way, and Sparti himself later withdrew his testimony, which besides in another details missed the facts. Nevertheless, his statements about the expected "Tirol suit" were to become the main reason for the conviction of NAR leaders. This was indeed a fundamental premise, given the deficiency of any concrete evidence of the defendants in Bologna on the day of the assassination.
Doubts as to whether the assassination was carried out by neo-fascists do not end there. As the next trials showed, as shortly as after the explosion, peculiar services began to make false clues indicating “fascists”, most of which was to be found in January 1981 in 1 of the trains of the suitcase with explosives and papers belonging to 2 foreigners. This was evidence of the alleged "Terror on trains" action to be carried out by an global right-wing terrorist network, but as it turned out, it was a hoax created by peculiar services agents. Another effort to confuse the investigation, developed by the service in cooperation with investigative justice Aldo Gentil, was the “Lebanese thread” according to which Italian terrorists trained in Lebanese paramilitary camps were to be liable for the assassination. However, this lead was rapidly abandoned because, despite many efforts by the service, not 1 Italian could be found who could be accused of specified activity.
So much indicates that Fioravanti and Mambro had no connection with the assassination. Nor did Francesco Cossiga, who stated publically in 1991 that he had wrongly described the assassination as ‘fascist’ and that he had been misled by peculiar services. Furthermore, his daughter claims that 1 day she met Mambro and Fioravanti, after they were released, as they drank tea with her father in his surviving room. Cossiga calmed his daughter down, saying, “They are innocent erstwhile it comes to Bologna!”
Palestinian Threat
So if the work of the NAR terrorists is highly questionable, are there any clues to any another more credible hypothesis? There are numerous, and it should be pointed out, that there are no conspiracy theories, but well-known and well-documented facts, revealed mainly by the activities of 2 parliamentary committees: the commission dealing with assassinations and the alleged Mitrokhin commission. They point to the "Palestinian thread", linked to the "Carlos Group".
The explanation of the subject should begin with the seemingly unrelated event of the arrest of 3 left-wing terrorists in Orton in November 1979, who carried 2 Fire-2 anti-aircraft missiles, as it turned out, belonging to the Palestine Liberation Organization. As a result, Abu Anzeh Saleh, surviving in Bologna, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, was arrested, formally engaged in trade and, in fact, as a typical of the People's Front of the Liberation of Palestine, a communist organization with ties to global terrorism (including the Italian Communist Red Brigades), officially incorporated into the OWP since 1970. The problem was that since 1973, Italy had the alleged Moro agreement, a secret agreement between the then Prime Minister Aldo Moro and the LFWP, which was to warrant Palestinian terrorists freedom of arms transport, provided that they did not commit attacks in Italy.
In April, the LFWP authorities discussed with Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, ps. Carlos, liable for global terrorism, plans for future actions, and in May the LFWP issued an ultimatum, which nevertheless was not implemented.
So erstwhile a bomb went off in Bologna on 2 August, the Italian government had many reasons to believe that the LFWP was behind it, and adequate to keep it out. More reason to hide it, there was an Aldo Gentile investigator investigating the Bologna bombing, and a privately good friend of Abu Saleh. He maintained contact with him even before the bombing, knowing about his terrorist past, and erstwhile Saleh returned to Bologna in July 1981, where he remained under home arrest, Gentile applied for approval to leave for Rome. A fewer months later, the justice went to Beirut, most likely in the company of Saleh.
Perhaps this relationship between a Palestinian terrorist and a justice to find assassins explains a hectic and mass manhunt on right-wing members to conceal the actual guilty. In fact, around 200 right-wing activists were arrested under various pretexts in the Bologna bombing. frequently the reasons for the arrest were completely absurd, as in the case of Guido Giraudo, the deputy manager of the weekly "Candido", who was arrested – precisely by the order of Aldo Gentili – in connection with a series of articles published in the paper concerning the assassination (which brought nothing fresh to what another media had published). He spent 2 weeks in prison, as the court later judged, completely unfounded. Additionally, in order to make Gentil's invented “Lebanese tropus” credible, Lebanese medical student Camille Tawil and 3 right-wing Trieste activists who had made a journey to Lebanon a small earlier were arrested.
So does this mean that the Bologna assassination was actually a retaliatory action for breaking the contract and arresting Abu Saleh? This would be a probable thesis, but 1 fundamental fact indicates that the thought was different – that is, the number of victims disagrees.
Missing body
According to the authoritative version of the assassination, 85 people died, including a young woman, Maria Fresu, who traveled with her daughter and friend. The girl's body was found, a friend survived, and Maria Fresu seems to have disappeared. Her distraught parents were given only a fewer fragments of the body, seemingly female, including a condition of the scalp with long hair and 3 fingers, but no 1 could explain what happened to the remainder of the remains. A akin destiny was besides met by a mysterious headless corpse, which the witnesses saw at the scene moments after the explosion, but which later disappeared and were not included in the list of victims. The fact that any body may have been missing is not peculiarly surprising, given that during the first fewer hours after the explosion, the station's area was mostly available and dozens of spontaneous volunteers helped on site. Thus, everyone could enter the scene of tragedy without hindrance.
The question is: to whom would they belong, and by whom would they be taken? The most logical explanation we have is that the explosive was carried by a female who leaned over it at the minute of the explosion. This would indicate that this was not about the bombing, but an accident in the shipment of explosives, and the body was taken by the partners of an unfortunate courier to prevent her identification.
However, this thesis assumes that the partners had to be nearby. And indeed, in the following years, a list of interesting characters was collected, which were then present in Bologna. No NARs were found, but many leftist extremists were shown to be present. Among them was an utmost left student named Mauro di Vittorio, who was besides killed by the detonation and had to be close the site of the explosion, as his body was badly burned. In addition, Thomas Kram and Christa Margot Fröhlich – Carlos group terrorists specialising in explosives – have stayed in hotels close the station; Francesco "Franco" Marra – a terrorist associate of the Red Brigades; Salvatore Muggironi – a sympathizer of the Red Brigades, whose papers were found at the station after the explosion; Tullio Olivetti and Maurizio Folini – 2 arms dealers, active in the mediate East. In addition, the presence of 3 Chilean women with false passports produced for the Carlos group was confirmed. The last 2 interesting people were Paolo Bellini, a common criminal besides associated with the right-wing organization Avanguardia Nazionale, who besides maintains contacts with peculiar services, and his right-hand Sergio Picciafuoco.
Only Paolo Bellini and Sergio Picciafuoco were arrested from all over this gallery of terrorists and arms dealers. Picciafuoco was accused of complicity, but was acquitted in 1997, while Bellini was sentenced to life in 2023 as the 5th direct perpetrator of the assassination. This second judgement deserves peculiar attention due to the fact that it was most likely intended to confirm the guilt of the “fascist” but in practice contradicts erstwhile judgments. Bellini did not belong to NAR, he had no connection with this organization, and he most likely didn't really know its leaders, yet, according to his judgment, he carried the bomb to the station with them. In this context, it would besides be worth considering why "material contractors" (i.e. escutori materiali) the assassination would be as many as five, 1 of which is completely unrelated to the others.
On the basis of these facts, it is likely that the detonation at the Bologna station was not intentional. So if the bomb wasn't meant to detonate here, then where was it intended? A clue may be the fact that on 11 July 1980 the Prefect of Coronas Police warned the chief of police in Bari of a possible effort to release Abu Saleh from a maximum safety prison in Trapani and of a possible assassination of the prison itself. So it is not excluded that Bologna was only expected to be the place of dispatch of the bomb, but in the meantime something went wrong.
True Perps
The explosive was then to be transported further, possibly south of the country, to carry out an assassination of the Trapani prison. However, as a consequence of the accident, the charge exploded in the waiting area of the train station, and the female carrying it died as a consequence of an explosion, after which her associates, utilizing the prevailing confusion, decided to remove her body from the station. The first time, however, they made a mistake and took Maria Fres' body away, and only the second time they were able to identify and carry out the right victim. However, the remains of the dismembered corpse remain, which, in view of the inability to explain the body's disappearance, were given to Maria Fres' parents as the only thing left of it. During the process to find the guilty explosions, the presence of leftist terrorists close the site of the detonation was ignored by the judiciary, while the investigation was artificially directed towards the alleged work of the utmost right, the conviction of the "fascist terrorists" seemingly is only a cover-up to cover up the real perpetrators. However, according to the authoritative version, confirmed by judgments and publicized by the media, it is Francesca Mambro and Valerio Fioravanti together with another representatives of the utmost right who are liable for the massacre.
Although there are many questions to this authoritative version, no 1 is trying to find answers at legal level. In particular, the fact confirmed by DNA analysis that the remains of another individual in Maria Fres's grave should be of interest to the justice system, as it is clear that the findings to date are incorrect in many respects. However, it seems that neither judges nor journalists are curious in exploring this issue. Even the president of the association of relatives of the victims of the massacre, Paolo Bologna, for which it should be peculiarly crucial to discover the truth, actively opposed the exhumation of Maria Fres' alleged body, curiosally arguing that it would be a manifestation of disrespect for the deceased. However, possibly the real reason for his attitude is that in 2012 he published a book in which he decreed that neofascists and P2 were guilty, and he realized that the exhumation results would seriously undermine his credibility as well, and possibly besides his political career in the ranks of the leftist organization Partito Democratico.
While his attitude is not peculiarly surprising, it is hard to realize the indifference to these facts of the judiciary. It is understandable that in the 1980s it was justified to conceal the fact about the threat of Palestinian terrorism, but who and what business has in hiding this fact now? Or is it a deliberate omission to establish a belief in society of the guilt of the “high right”? possibly it's just a fear of admitting your mistakes, or worse – just being lazy? Paradoxically, it seems that with the present state of cognition it is easier to find who is guilty of the detonation than why this fact is inactive hidden.
Based on: G. Giraudo C’è del marcio a Bologna. 12 mesi per far sparire la verità sulla stragePassaggio al Bosco, 2024
