Years of Lead (Italy)

The Years of Lead was a period of socio-political turmoil in Italy that lasted from the late 1960s into the early 1980s. This period was marked by a wave of terrorism, initially called "Opposing Extremisms" (Opposti Estremismi) and later renamed as the "Years of Lead" (Anni di piombo). Among the possible origins of the name are a reference to the vast number of bullets fired, or the 1981 film Marianne and Juliane by Margarethe von Trotta, of which Italian title is Anni di piombo.

There was widespread social conflict and unprecedented acts of terrorism carried out by both right- and left-wing paramilitary groups. An attempt to endorse the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) by the Tambroni Cabinet led to rioting and was short-lived. The Christian Democrats (DC) were instrumental in the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) gaining power in the 1960s and they created a coalition. The assassination of the Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro in 1978 ended the strategy of historic compromise between the DC and the Italian Communist Party (PCI). The assassination was carried out by the Red Brigades, then led by Mario Moretti. Between 1969 and 1981, nearly 2,000 murders were attributed to political violence in the form of bombings, assassinations, and street warfare between rival militant factions. Although political violence has decreased substantially in Italy since that time, instances of sporadic violent crimes continue because of the re-emergence of anti-immigrant, neo-fascist, and militant communist groups.

The left-wing autonomist movement lasted from 1968 until the end of the 1970s. The "years of lead" began with the shooting death of the policeman Antonio Annarumma in 1969 and the Piazza Fontana bombing. These events are attributed to the far-right, the far-left, and the secret services, depending on the source.

The "Strategy of Tension" theory
Many aspects of the "years of lead" are still shrouded in mystery and debate about them continues. There were many, especially on the left, who spoke of the existence in those years of a strategy of tension (strategia della tensione). According to this theory, occult and foreign forces were involved in creating an atmosphere of fear in order to maintain social order. Identified organizations included: Gladio, a NATO secret anti-communist structure; the P2 masonic lodge, discovered in 1981 following the arrest of its leader Licio Gelli; fascist "black terrorism" organisations such as Ordine Nuovo or Avanguardia Nazionale; Italian secret services; and the United States.

Despite repeated denials of its authenticity the existence of several copies of US Army Field Manual 30-31B, some of them found in possession of key figure of pro-U.S. and far-right eversive figures (such as Licio Gelli), are hard to discount as fabrications.

This theory re-emerged in the 1990s, following Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti's recognition of the existence of Gladio before the Parliamentary assembly on 24 October 1990. Juridical investigations into the Piazza Fontana bombing and the Bologna massacre and several parliamentary reports pointed towards such a deliberate strategy of tension. Milan prosecutor Guido Salvini indicted a U.S. Navy officer, David Carrett, for his role in the Piazza Fontana bombing. He also surprised Carlo Rocchi, a CIA operative in Italy, in 1995 while searching for information concerning the case in the mid-1990s.

In 2000, a Parliamentary Commission report from The Olive Tree (l'Ulivo), a centre-left political coalition, concluded that the strategy of tension had been supported by the United States to "stop the PCI, and to a certain degree also the PSI, from reaching executive power in the country".

On 4 May 2007 the Italian Parliament declared 9 May as a memorial day dedicated to the victims of terrorism.

France
The Mitterrand doctrine, which was established in 1985 by François Mitterrand, stated that Italian far-left terrorists who fled to France and who were convicted of violent acts in Italy, excluding "active, actual, bloody terrorism" during the "Years of Lead", would receive asylum and would not be subject to extradition to Italy. They would be integrated into French society.

The act was announced on 21 April 1985, at the 65th Congress of the Human Rights League (Ligue des droits de l'homme, LDH), stating that Italian criminals who had given up their violent pasts and had fled to France would be protected from extradition to Italy:

Nicaragua
Some Italian far left activists found political asylum in Nicaragua, including Alessio Casimirri, who took part in the kidnapping of Aldo Moro.

Public protests
Public protests shook Italy during 1969, with the autonomist student movement being particularly active, leading to the occupation of the Fiat automobile factory in Milan. Mario Capanna of the New Left movement, was prominent at the time, along with members of Potere Operaio and Autonomia Operaia (Antonio Negri, Oreste Scalzone, Franco Piperno), and Lotta Continua (Adriano Sofri).

Death of Antonio Annarumma
On 19 November 1969, Antonio Annarumma, a Milanese policeman, was assassinated during a riot of far-left demonstrators. He was the first public official to die in the ensuing wave of violence referred to as "The Years of Bullets".

Piazza Fontana bombing
The Monument to Victor Emmanuel II, the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro in Rome and the Banca Commerciale Italiana and the Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Milan were bombed in December.

Local police arrested 80 or so suspects from left-wing groups, including Giuseppe Pinelli, an anarchist initially blamed for the bombing, and Pietro Valpreda. Their guilt was denied by left-wing members, especially by members of the student movement, then prominent in Milan's universities, as they believed that the bombing was carried out by fascists. Following the death of Giuseppe Pinelli, who "accidentally fell out of a window" on 15 December while in police custody, the radical left-wing newspaper Lotta Continua started a campaign accusing police officer Luigi Calabresi of Pinelli's murder. The accusation of wrongful death at the hands of the police was eventually determined to be false by the state, but only after many years of investigation.

Meanwhile, the anarchist Valpreda and five others were convicted and jailed for the bombing. They were later released after three years of preventive detention. Over a 36-year period, numerous suspects were investigated, with no convictions. The identity of the perpetrators remains unknown to this day.

The Red Brigades, the most prominent far-left terrorist organization, conducted a secret internal investigation that paralleled the official inquiry. They ordered that the inquiry remain secret, because of the unfavorable light that it could shed on other terrorist organizations. The inquiry was discovered after a fire-fight between Red Brigade forces and Italian police (carabinieri) at Robbiano di Mediglia in October 1974. The cover-up was exposed in 2000, by President Giovanni Pellegrino.

The Golpe Borghese
In December, a neo-fascist coup, dubbed the Golpe Borghese, was planned by several far-right leaders and supported by members of the Corpo Forestale dello Stato, along with the right-aligned entrepreneurs and industrialists. The "Black Prince", Junio Valerio Borghese, took part in it. The coup, called off at the last moment, was discovered by the press, and publicly released a few months later.

Assassination of Alessandro Floris
On 26 March 1971 Alessandro Floris was assassinated in Genoa, by a unit of the October 22 Group, a far-left terrorist organization. An amateur photographer had taken a photo of the killer that enabled police to identify the terrorists. The group was investigated and more members arrested. Some fled to Milan and joined the "Gruppi di Azione Partigiana" (GAP) and later the Red Brigades.

The Red Brigade considered the group Gruppo XXII Ottobre its predecessor and in April 1974, it kidnapped Judge Mario Sossi in an effort to free the arrested member. The effort was unsuccessful. Years later, the Red Brigade killed the judge Francesco Coco on June 8, 1976 out of revenge, along with his two police escorts, Giovanni Saponara and Antioco Deiana.

Assassination of Luigi Calabresi
On 17 May 1972, police officer Luigi Calabresi, recipient of the gold medal of the Italian Republic for civil valour, was assassinated in Milan. Authorities initially focused on suspects in Lotta Continua, before detaining two neo-fascist activists, Gianni Nardi and Bruno Stefano, along with the German Gudrun Kiess, in 1974. They were ultimately released. Sixteen years later, Adriano Sofri, Giorgio Petrostefani, Ovidio Bompressi, and Leonardo Marino were arrested in Milan following Marino's confession to the murder. Their highly controversial trial finally established their guilt in the organisation and carrying out the murder.

Peteano bombing
On 31 May 1972, three Italian Carabinieri were killed in Peteano in a bombing, blamed on Lotta Continua. Officers of the Carabinieri were later indicted and convicted for manipulating the investigation in false directions. Judge Casson identified Ordine Nuovo member Vincenzo Vinciguerra as the culprit who had planted the Peteano bomb.

The neo-fascist terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra, arrested in the 1980s for the bombing in Peteano, declared to magistrate Felice Casson that this false flag attack had been intended to force the Italian state to declare a state of emergency and to become more authoritarian. Vinciguerra explained how the SISMI military intelligence agency had protected him, allowing him to escape to Francoist Spain.

Casson's investigation revealed that the right-wing organization Ordine Nuovo had collaborated with the Italian Military Secret Service, SID (Servizio Informazioni Difesa). Together, they had engineered the Peteano terror and then wrongly blamed the militant Italian far-left, the Red Brigades. He confessed and testified that he had been covered by an entire network of sympathizers in Italy and abroad who had ensured that after the attack he could escape. "A whole mechanism came into action", Vinciguerra recalled, "that is, the Carabinieri, the Minister of the Interior, the customs services and the military and civilian intelligence services accepted the ideological reasoning behind the attack."

The Primavalle Fire
An 16 April 1973 attack by members of Potere Operaio on the house of neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) militant Mario Mattei resulted in his two sons, aged 8 and 20, being burned alive.

Milan Police command (Questura di Milano) bombing
During a 17 May 1973 ceremony honoring Luigi Calabresi, in which the Interior Minister was present, Gianfranco Bertoli, an anarchist, threw a bomb that killed four and injured 45.

In 1990, it was discovered that Bertoli, who had been convicted of the bombing, was an SID informant and member of Gladio. The secret services claimed that this was only a coincidence. A magistrate investigating the assassination attempt of Mariano Rumor found that Bertoli's files were incomplete. General Gianadelio Maletti, head of the SID from 1971 to 1975, was convicted in absentia in 1990 for obstruction of justice in the Mariano Rumor case.

Piazza della Loggia bombing
In May 1974, a bomb exploded during an anti-fascist demonstration in Brescia, killing eight and wounding over 90. In 2005, the Court of Cessation issued an arrest warrant against Delfo Zorzi, a former Ordine Nuovo member currently living in Japan.

Attempted neo-fascist coup
Count Edgardo Sogno revealed in his memoirs that in July 1974, he visited the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station chief in Rome to inform him of preparations for a neo-fascist coup. Asking what the United States (US) government would do in case of such a coup, Sogno wrote that he was told, "the United States would have supported any initiative tending to keep the communists out of government." General Maletti declared, in 2001, that he had not known about Sogno's relationship with the CIA and had not been informed about the coup, known as Golpe bianco (White Coup), led by Randolfo Pacciardi.

Bombing of Italicus train
On August 4, 1974, 12 died and 105 were injured in the bombing of the Italicus Roma-Brennero express at San Benedetto Val di Sambro.

Arrest of Vito Miceli
General Vito Miceli, chief of the SIOS military intelligence agency in 1969, and head of the SID from 1970 to 1974, was arrested in 1974 on charges of "conspiracy against the state." Following his arrest, the Italian secret services were reorganized by a 24 October 1977 law in an attempt to reassert civilian control over the intelligence agencies. The SID was divided into the current SISMI, the SISDE, and the CESIS, which was to directly coordinate with the Prime Minister of Italy. An Italian Parliamentary Committee on Secret services control (Copaco) was created at the same time.

Arrest of Red Brigade leaders
In 1974, some leaders of the Red Brigades, including Renato Curcio and Alberto Franceschini, were arrested, but new leadership continued the war against the Italian right-wing establishment with increased fervor.

The year before, Potere Operaio had disbanded, although Autonomia Operaia carried on in its wake. Lotta Continua also dissolved in 1976, although the magazine struggled on for several years. From remnants of Lotta Continua and similar groups, the terror organization Prima Linea emerged.

Prima Linea: an emerging terrorist organization
On 29 April 1976, Enrico Pedenovi was killed in Milan by the organization Prima Linea. This was the first assassination conducted by Prima Linea.

1977
On 12 March 1977, a Turin policeman Giuseppe Ciotta was killed by far-left terrorist organization, Prima Linea.

On 14 May, in Milan, some activists from a far-left organization pulled out their pistols and began to fire on the police, killing policeman Antonio Custra. A photographer took a photo of an activist shooting at the police. This year was called the time of the "P38", referring to the Walther P38 pistol.

Kidnapping and assassination of Aldo Moro
On 16 March 1978, Aldo Moro was kidnapped by the Red Brigades, and five of his bodyguards killed. The Red Brigades were a militant leftist group, then led by Mario Moretti. Aldo Moro was a left-leaning Christian Democrat who served several times as Prime Minister. Before his murder he was trying to include the Italian Communist Party (PCI), headed by Enrico Berlinguer, in the government through a deal called the Historic Compromise. The PCI was the largest communist party in western Europe. This was largely because of its non-extremist and pragmatic stance, its growing independence from Moscow and its eurocommunist doctrine. The PCI was especially strong in areas such as Emilia Romagna, where it had stable government positions and mature practical experience, which may have contributed to a more pragmatic approach to politics. The Red Brigades were fiercely opposed by the Communist Party and trade unions, a few left-wing politicians even used the condescending expression "comrades who do wrong" (Compagni che sbagliano). The circumstances surrounding Aldo Moro's murder have never been made clear, but the consequences included that fact that PCI did not gain executive power.

Investigative journalist Carmine Pecorelli was assassinated on March 20, 1979. In a May 1978 article, he had drawn connections between Aldo Moro's kidnapping and Gladio.

Moro's assassination was followed by a large clampdown on the social movement, including the arrest of many members of Autonomia Operaia, including, Oreste Scalzone and political philosopher Toni Negri.

1979
A year with more assassinations

On 19 January 1979, Turin policeman Giuseppe Lorusso was killed by the Prima Linea organization.

On 29 January, Emilio Alesandrini was killed in Milan by Prima Linea.

On 9 March, university student Emanuele Iurilli was killed in Turin by Prima Linea.

On 20 March, investigative journalist Mino Pecorelli was gunned down in his car in Rome. Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and Mafia boss Gaetano Badalamenti were sentenced in 2002 to 24 years in prison for the murder, though the sentences were overturned the following year.

On 13 July, in Druento (a town near Turin), policeman Bartolomeo Mana was killed by Prima Linea.

On 18 July, Carmine Civitate was killed in Turin, by Prima Linea.

On 21 September, Carlo Ghiglieno was killed in Turin by a group of Prima Linea.

More assassinations
On 5 February 1980, in Monza, Paolo Paoletti was killed by Prima Linea.

On 12 February, in Rome, at the "La Sapienza" University, Vittorio Bachelet, vice-president of the Superior Council of Magistrates and former president of the Roman Catholic association Azione Cattolica, was killed by the Red Brigades.

On 19 March, in Milan, Judge Guido Galli was killed by a group of Prima Linea.

On 10 April, in Turin, Giuseppe Pisciuneri a Mondialpol guard, was killed by Ronde Proletarie.

On 2 August, a bomb killed 85 people and wounded more than 200 in Bologna. Known as the Bologna massacre, the blast destroyed a large portion of the city's railway station. This was found to be a fascist bombing, mainly organized by the NAR, who had ties with the Roman criminal organization Banda della Magliana.

1981
On 17 December 1981, James L. Dozier, an American general and the deputy commander of NATO's South European forces based in Verona, was kidnapped by Red Brigades. He was freed in Padua on 28 January 1982 by the Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza (NOCS), an Italian police anti-terrorist task force.

The Salerno Massacre
On October 21, 1982, a group of Red Brigade terrorists attacked a bank in Turin, killing two guards, Antonio Pedio and Sebastiano d'Alleo.

On 26 August 1982, a group of Red Brigade terrorists attacked a military troop convoy, in Salerno. In the attack, Corporal Antonio Palumbo and policemen Antonio Bandiera and Mario De Marco were killed. The terrorists escaped.

1984
On 23 December 1984, a bomb in a train between Florence and Rome killed 16 and wounded more than 200. In 1989, the mafiosi Giuseppe Calo and four others defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment for the bombing. According to prosecutors, the far-right organizations conspired with the mafia and the Camorra to carry out the attack.

1987
On 20 March 1987, Licio Giorgieri, a general in the Italian Air Force, was assassinated by the Red Brigades in Rome.

1988
On 16 April 1988, Senator Roberto Ruffilli was assassinated in an attack by a group of Red Brigades in Forlì.

Continued violence
In the late 1990s - early 2000s (decade), a resurgence of Red Brigade terrorism led to the assassination of labour law consultants and experts, Massimo D'Antona and Marco Biagi.

On 20 May 1999, Massimo D'Antona, consultant of the Work Ministry, was assassinated in an attack by a group of terrorists of the Red Brigade, group BR-PCC, in Rome.

On 19 March 2002, Marco Biagi, consultant of the Work Ministry, was assassinated in an attack by a group of terrorists of the Red Brigade, in Bologna.

On 2 March 2003, Emanuele Petri, state policeman, was assassinated by a group of terrorists of the Red Brigade, near Castiglion Fiorentino.

In 2005 some suspected terrorists were arrested, known as the New Red Brigade (Nuove Brigate Rosse). On 13 June the court in Milan (corte d'Assise) condemned 14 terrorists. The leader was sentenced to 15 years in jail. Three suspected terrorists were found not guilty.

Terrorist organizations in Italy (incomplete list)

 * Definitions of terrorism
 * Red Brigades
 * Prima Linea
 * Gruppo XXII Ottobre
 * Ordine Nuovo
 * National Vanguard (Italy)
 * Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari