Blast at Milan bank killed 17 and wounded 88
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| The office and counter area inside the Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Milan after the explosion |
Italy found itself the victim of an horrific terrorist
attack on this day in 1969 when a bomb blast at a Milan bank left 17 people
dead and a further 88 injured.
The bomb exploded at 4.37pm in the headquarters of the Banca
Nazionale dell’Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana, just 200m away from the Duomo. It was caused by a bomb containing about
18lbs of explosives left on the third floor, killing customers and members of
staff.
At around the same time, two bombs exploded in Rome,
injuring 14 people. Another device, placed in the courtyard of a bank near
Teatro alla Scala in Milan, was deactivated by police.
The explosions followed one month after a policeman was
killed during a riot of left-wing extremists in Milan and are generally seen as
the start of a period of violent social and political unrest in Italy dubbed
the Years of Lead.
Over a period of almost 20 years, the Years of Lead resulted
in more than 200 deaths, many committed by the left-wing terrorist group
Brigate Rosse (the Red Brigades), others by far-right organisations such as Nuclei
Armati Rivoluzionari (Armed Revolutionary Groups) and Ordine Nuovo (the New Order).
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| The plaque outside the bank commemorating the victims of the bomb |
Many of the victims died as a result of targeted
assassinations, often aimed at policemen, business leaders, members of the
judiciary. The highest profile individual killing was of the former prime
minister, Aldo Moro, murdered after being kidnapped in Rome and held captive
for 54 days.
Others were killed indiscriminately in large-scale bombings,
such as Piazza Fontana and the Bologna railway station massacre in 1980, which
claimed the lives of 85 travellers when a huge bomb hidden in a suitcase
exploded in a crowded waiting room.
Decades of investigations into the Piazza Fontana bombing led
to a total of 4,000 arrests, three trials and sentences of life imprisonment
for six alleged terrorists, all of which were subsequently quashed.
The acquittals of three neo-fascists in the third trial were
announced in 2004, almost 35 years after the bombing took place, and meant that
those who carried it out were never conclusively identified.
As a result, the conspiracy theories that surround the
incident and much of the Years of Lead have persisted.
On the face of it, the Years of Lead was a struggle for
supremacy between the ideologies of the left, represented in the mainstream by
the Italian Communist Party, and those of the right, who did not have
mainstream representation but were propagated by neo-fascist far-right
organisations such as Ordine Nuovo and the Italian Social Movement.
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| Giuseppe Pinelli, a railway worker, who died while being held by police |
But it was suspected that forces on both sides were being
manipulated by western secret service agents as part of the so-called “strategy
of tension”, designed primarily to ensure that the Italian Communist Party’s
growing popularity in post-War Italy went only so far, and that they were never
allowed to take power.
In the case of the Piazza Fontana bombing, the theory is
that Ordine Nuovo members were responsible but wanted it to appear that it was
the work of left-wing extremists committed to the overthrow of the majority Christian
Democratic party and were supported in this aim by agents of the US Central
Intelligence Agency.
This theory was backed up by an investigation in 2000 by the
left-leaning Olive Tree coalition, which concluded that that US intelligence
agents were informed in advance of the bombing but did nothing to stop it, and
that clandestine payments were made to Pino Rauti, the founder of Ordine Nuovo,
via a US Embassy press officer.
Furthermore, in a newspaper interview in 2000, Paolo Emilio
Taviani, the Christian Democrat co-founder of the secret NATO anti-communist
force codenamed Gladio, which stayed behind in Italy after the Allies had
withdrawn at the end of the Second World War, said that Italian secret services
were also aware of the planned bombing in Milan but that rather than send
agents to prevent it, they instead despatched another agent, whose mission was
to spread stories blaming left-wing anarchists for the attack.
Indeed, in addition to a plaque on the wall of the Banca
Nazionale dell’Agricoltura building that lists the names of the victims of the bomb, there
are memorials in Piazza Fontana to the anarchist, Giuseppe Pinelli, who was
arrested as part of a sweep of known anarchists in the wake of the bombing and
died when he fell from a fourth floor window of Milan’s main police station,
supposedly as a result of feeling faint during questioning and needing to take
some air.
Pinelli’s fate inspired the satirist and playwright Dario Fo to write his
famous play, Accidental Death of an Anarchist.
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| One of the memorials to Pinelli in Piazza Fontana, placed by Milan city council |
Travel tip:
Piazza Fontana is literally just a few metres from the back
of Milan’s Duomo, accessed via Via Carlo Maria Martini. There are two simple memorials mourning the
death of Giuseppe Pinelli placed on a lawn opposite the Banca Nazionale dell’Agricoltura,
in front of a police building (although not the one in which he died). One was
placed by students and anarchist friends of Pinelli, the other by Milan city council.
Only the former refers to him being killed; the other simply says that he “died
tragically.”
Travel tip:
On the other side of Piazza Fontana from the Pinelli
memorials is Milan’s 16th-century Archbishop's Palace, partly
modified with neoclassical additions in the 18th century, which is
the official residence of the Archbishop of Milan. The palace owes its grandeur
to archbishop Carlo Borromeo, who wanted to live permanently in the palace and
commissioned Pellegrino Tibaldi to undertake a reconstruction project in 1585. The
façade owes its appearance to Giuseppe Piermarini, who restored the palace in
1784.
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