Adriano Sofri and Giorgio Pietrostefani, former leaders of Lotta Continua, were convicted of plotting Calabresi's assassination, while members Ovidio Bompressi and Leonardo Marino were sentenced for carrying it out.
[9] Siciliano said that he had been present at a meeting with Zorzi and Carlo Maria Maggi in April 1969, in the Ezzelino bookstore in Padua owned by Giovanni Ventura, when Freda announced the program of the train bombings.
[11] In 1998, Milan judge Guido Salvini indicted U.S. Navy officer David Carrett on charges of political and military espionage for his participation in the Piazza Fontana bombing.
Salvini also opened up a case against Sergio Minetto, an Italian official of the U.S.-NATO intelligence network, and "collaboratore di giustizia" Carlo Digilio (Uncle Otto), who served as the CIA coordinator in Northeastern Italy in the sixties and seventies.
[14] General Gianadelio Maletti [it], the head of SID (Servizio Informazioni Difesa), and a member of the secret masonic society P2 was found responsible for obstructing the investigation and withholding information during the first trial in Catanzaro.
In an effort to protect extreme right-wing groups, Maletti destroyed a report concerning the Padua cell of Ordine Nuovo and arranged for potential witnesses to leave the country.
[18] Several elements brought the investigators to the theory that members of extreme right-wing groups were responsible for the bombings[citation needed]: Main stages of the trial: The supreme Court of Cassation sentenced two members of the Italian secret services – General Gian Adelio Maletti (1 year of jail) and Captain Antonio Labruna (10 months) – to having misled the investigation and acquitted Marshal Gaetano Tanzilli, accused of perjury.
The Court certified that Martino Siciliano (another Ordine Nuovo's pentito) attended the assembly with Zorzi and Maggi in April 1969, in the library Ezzelino of Padua, where Freda announced the program of the train bombings.
It also alleged that Pino Rauti (at that time the leader of the MSI Fiamma-Tricolore party), a journalist and founder of the far-right New Order organization, received regular funding from a press officer at the U.S. embassy in Rome.
"[35] According to the Swiss writer Daniele Ganser and British journalist Philip Willan, the bombing was the work of a network of far-right militants, as part of a terrorist campaign known as a strategy of tension, with the aim of blaming the crime on communist cells, discrediting the political left, and be a catalyst to move away from democratic institutions.
[36][37] One member Vincenzo Vinciguerra of the right-wing conspiracy involved in the series of Strategy of tension terrorist bombings explained "The December 1969 explosion was supposed to be the detonator which would have convinced the political and military authorities to declare a state of emergency.