[2] The perpetrators were subsequently identified as members of the neofascist Milanese group La Fenice ("The Phoenix"),[note 1] and brought to trial.
[5] During the night of 16 April 1973, flammable and explosive materials, including gasoline, were thrown under the door and inside the family's apartment and ignited, starting a fire.
[8] The text's conclusion, summarized in the introduction, was as follows:The hype about the Primavalle fire does not look like the result of a long and premeditated provocation.
'Primavalle' is rather a plot constructed frantically, feverishly, by the police and the judiciary...to transform a trivial accident or a dark episode, created and grown in the wormhole of the fascist section of the district, into an occasion to revive neofascist extremism when its credibility had been severely undermined after the events of Black Thursday[note 5] and the assassination of policeman Marino.
The organization Lotta Continua ("Continuous Struggle") issued a statement claiming that "the fascist provocation has gone beyond all limits and has reached the point of fascism murdering its own children.
[10] The most serious episode took place on 28 February 1975, when young people from the right and left clashed outside the Court, with the violence spreading over to Via Ottaviano, where a Greek student and far-right militant, Mikis Mantakas, was shot dead.
[note 6][10][14] Only Achille Lollo was present when the trial began, the other two defendants, Marino Clavo and Manlio Grillo, having absconded abroad.
[15] Various prominent leftists, such as Alberto Moravia, Dario Bellezza, Elio Pecora, Ruggero Guarini, and others, publicly supported the innocence of the accused and expressed their solidarity with them.
[16] In 1973, at the organization's national conference, held in Rosolina from 31 May until 3 June, two sides in Potere Operaio clashed, on account of the Primavalle arson: The Rome grouping of Franco Piperno and Oreste Scalzone and the Venetian one whose main ideological reference had been the work of Toni Negri.
Manlio Grillo had left for Sweden and then moved on to Nicaragua, helped by Potere Operaio co-founder Oreste Scalzone, who also assisted Lollo.
"[21] Piperno stated that the organization's leadership "believed in the innocence [of the accused]" but, nonetheless, "questioned all of Primavalle's comrades...also Gaeta, Perrone and Lecco" who "covered Lollo and the others.
"[21] When "doubts multiplied" at the top of Potere Operaio, an internal investigation was assigned to Valerio Morucci,[note 8] at the time in charge of the organization's "illegal work."
As Piperno claimed, Morucci reported to the leadership that Marino Clavo, whom he'd interrogated in a Florence hiding place, confessed the culpability of Lollo, Grillo, and himself.
And, in view also of the fact that the whole of the Italian Left was supporting at the time the innocence of Potere Operaio, Piperno insisted that "telling [the truth] would not have been possible at all.