Terrorism in Italy

[6] The end of the "Years of Lead" is conventionally associated with the liberation of the United States General James Lee Dozier through a bloodless NOCS operation that took place in Padua on 28 January 1982.

Over the decade, the number of violent episodes waned, partially due to the loss of support of the Brigate Rosse as a result of the assassination of the communist worker Guido Rossa in 1979.

In 1982, a commando of five Palestinian terrorists, part of the revolutionary council Abu Nidal Organization, caused the death of Stefano Gaj Tachè (2 years old) and the injury of 37 more people at the synagogue of Rome.

The first attacks can be ascribable to the Stieler group, but the most important illegal organization was the Committee for the Liberation of South Tyrol (Befreiungsausschuss Südtirol).

Its first remarkable action was the so called "Night of Fire", in 1961, when terrorists blew up several trellis using 350 explosive devices, with the intention of drawing international attention on the South Tyrol question.

Although the 1970s were relatively a "soft" period, the 1980s were characterized by the reappearance of the South Tyrol terrorism as a Neo-nazi criminal organization, Ein Tirol, which was responsible for several dynamite attacks.

Contacts between local outlaws and militants belonging to the Italian far left organizations, such as Brigate Rosse and Nuclei Armati Proletari, were partially facilitated by the detention of extreme Left supporters in the maximum security prisons of the island, as it happened with the southern Italian mafiosi who were kept in prison in Northern Italy, conditioning the birth of "Mala del Brenta".

Among the main supporters of the subversive and secessionist cause, there was Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, who tried several times to make contact with numerous organizations in order to make Sardinia independent from Italy, helped by some separatist militant groups, and in order to establish a communist government based on the model proposed by Fidel Castro in Cuba.

The election of Graziano Mesina as the leader of the rebels, the most famous outlaw of the Sardinian criminal organization, were supported by both the local groups, as shown by several contacts with them, and the deviate secret services.

The last victim, Emanuele Petri, agent of the Polfer, killed on 2 March 2003 during a fire fight on a train on which the new leaders of the subversive organization, Nadia Desdemona Lioce and Mario Galesi, was travelling.

[9] Deportation of foreign suspects have been the cornerstone of Italy's counter-terrorism strategy and from January 2015 to April 2018, 300 individuals were expulsed from Italian soil.

In the summer of 1998 several letter bombs were sent to different politicians, journalists, magistrates and police officers, following the death of the anarchists Maria Soledad Rosas and Edoardo Massari.

The bomb was placed in order to demand for the closure of the Identification and Expulsion Centers, and it was claimed by the FAI in a flier signed by "Nucleo Maurizio Morales" delivered to the newspaper office of Libero.

The reports written by Italian and foreign security agencies, showed that several Islamic cells were placed in Italy; they were related to each other and waiting for calls and tasks.

[18] In December 2008, Rachid Ilhami and Albdelkader Ghafir, two Moroccan citizens, were arrested in Giussano, on the charge of planning attacks in their home town.

[20] On October 12, 2009, the first suicide attack, with the high potential of causing a massacre, was carried out by a Libyan man in Milan, against a police station.

On November 7, 1977, Law 801 came into force and it imposed secrecy on "acts, documents, news, activities and anything else whose circulation might result in damages to the integrity of the democratic State[26]".

[27] The end of the State secrecy "does not automatically lead to the revocation or disclosure of classified documents" The Italian mafia's association Cosa Nostra tried to influence the political and judiciary events also by resorting to violence, through the usage of explosives in order to spread terror.

This massacre caused the death of 17 people and injured 267, for the purpose of catching the eye of authorities and distracting them from the investigations of anti-mafia pools and from the declarations of the cooperating witnesses Tommaso Buscetta and Salvatore Contorno.

[31] In 1992–93 Cosa Nostra returned to terrorist activities, as a consequence of several life sentences pronounced during the "Maxi trial", and of the new anti-mafia measures launched by the government.