44 years have passed since the massacre at Bologna station. It was the August 2, 1980 and there were hundreds of people that day on vacation or passing through the railway junction. Like every year, Bologna remembers that attack and honors the 85 victims. At 8In the Courtyard of Honor of Palazzo d’AccursioMayor Matthew Lepore will meet the relatives of the victims of the massacre and then the procession will start from Piazza Nettuno to the station. Here is the speech of the president of the Association Paul Bolognese and at 10.25The triple train whistle will remember the exact moment of the explosion. A minute of silence will follow in memory of the victims.
For some years the city of Bologna has remembered the victims of the massacre at Bologna station with a permanent installation: eighty-five cobblestones of memory along the route from Piazza del Nettuno to Piazza Medaglie d’Oro. Inspired by the stumbling stones of the German artist Gunter Demnig, each one bears the name and age of one of the victims.
The slaughter
The attack was committed on Saturday 2 August 1980 at 10.25 am at Bologna Centrale railway station. It is the most serious terrorist act to have occurred in Italy since the Second World War.. The bomb, a timed device, exploded in the second-class waiting room. It was in an abandoned suitcase: 23 kg of explosive, a mixture of 5 kg of TNT and T4 called “Compound B”, boosted by 18 kg of gelatin.
The explosion caused the collapse of the West wing of the building and also hit the Adria Express 13534 Ancona-Basel train, which was parked on the first track, destroying about 30 meters of shelter, and the taxi rank in front of the station. Part of the debris remained for years in the Prati di Caprara area.
The rescue
The same people present at the station were the first to bring aid by extracting bodies from the rubble. The right lane of the ring roads of the historic center of Bologna was reserved for ambulances and emergency vehicles. Buses were also used to transport the many injured, in particular the one from line 37 (which remained one of the symbols of the massacre), cars and taxis. The youngest of the victims, Angela Fresu, was 3 years old (there are 7 children in total who lost their lives), her mother Maria’s body torn apart by the explosion was never found, the oldest, 86 years old, Antonio Montanari.
Doctors and nurses were asked to return to duty. The hearse that shuttled from the station to the institute of forensic medicine was car 4030 of line 37. Agide Melloni, from Imola, was the thirty-one-year-old driver: «They asked me to take the bodies away by bus. From morning until three in the morning, with white sheets hanging from the windows.”
Funerals
The funerals of the victims were held on August 6th in the Basilica of San Petronio. There were protests against the representatives of the government, presided over by Francesco Cossiga. The only applause was reserved for the President of the Republic Sandro Pertiniwho arrived by helicopter in Bologna at 5:30 pm on the day of the massacre, who, in tears, said: “I have no words, we are facing the most criminal undertaking that has ever taken place in Italy”. The only other president who has ever arrived in Bologna for the commemorations was Sergio Mattarella on the fortieth anniversary.
Investigations
It was that one neo-fascist the trail followed, but the judicial process was long and full of red herrings (there was also talk of a boiler explosion, of the involvement of the secret services and of Gaddafi’s Libya). There were immediate claims of responsibility, first by the NAR, Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionali, (a phone call that was found to have come from a Florentine office of the SISMI), then by the Red Brigades, followed by as many phone calls of denial by militants of the two terrorist groups.
The final verdict came only in 1995 with the conviction of Valerio Fioravanti and Francesca Mambromembers of the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari, as material perpetrators, “as members of the armed gang that organized and carried out the Bologna attack” and for having “been part of the group that had certainly organized that act”. Mambro and Fioravanti have always declared themselves innocent (according to Paolo Bolognesi, representative of the victims’ relatives, only to avoid linking their name to the massacre). Instead, they have admitted and claimed responsibility for dozens of other murders. In 2007, Luigi Ciavardini, a minor at the time of the events, was sentenced to thirty years for massacre.
In 2017, another former NAR was sent to trial, Gilberto Cavalliniaccused of aiding and abetting the massacre. He had already been tried and convicted for the same crime as an armed gang, and was later accused of being the supplier of false documents for Mambro and Fioravanti, a role already attributed to the collaborator of justice Massimo Sparti. The Court of Assizes of Appeal of Bologna confirmed his life sentence in September 2023. Cavallini was convicted of helping Fioravanti, Mambro and Ciavardini by hosting them in his home in Villorba di Treviso before the massacre and providing them with false documents and a car. He has always denied his involvement. He is being held in Terni prison, under semi-liberty.
Principals
The point that remains unclear for the relatives of the victims is that of the instigators: who wanted the massacre at the Bologna station? The general prosecutor of Bologna considers Licio Gelli, Umberto Ortolani, Federico Umberto D’Amato and Mario Tedeschi the instigators, financiers or organizers of the terrorist action. They are no longer indictable because all four are dead.
The Attorney General’s Office has come to the conclusion that behind the massacre are the Venerable of the Masonic Lodge P2, who died in 2015, connected with deviant State apparatuses to cover up and divert the investigations. The neo-fascists would have acted, according to the investigators, on the instructions of Licio Gelli and the others mentioned.
In April 2022 the first instance sentence of the so-called trial of the instigators. Life imprisonment for the former militant of Avanguardia Nazionale Paolo Bellini, considered among the material perpetrators of the massacre in collaboration with the three militants of the NAR Valerio Fioravanti, Francesca Mambro and Luigi Ciavardini, already definitively sentenced, and with the former NAR Gilberto Cavallini, sentenced for now only in the first degree. The former captain of the Carabinieri Piergiorgio Segatel was sentenced to 6 years for obstruction of justice, as requested by the prosecution, four years for Domenico Catracchia, the former administrator of condominiums in via Gradoli, in Rome, accused of false information to the prosecutors.
There Court of Appeal Of Bologna confirmed the first degree convictionwithin the trial of the instigators, for the fifth man of the massacre, Paolo Bellini, on July 8, 2024. Bellini claims to be innocent, but against him there is a video of a German tourist in which he was recognized by his ex-wife Mauritia Boniniwho also denied the alibi provided to her husband: he was not with her and the children at their mother’s house in Rimini at 9 in the morning.
The Court also confirmed other sentences: six years for misleading former Carabinieri captain Piergiorgio Segatel and four years for false information to the prosecutor of Domenico Catracchia, former administrator of condominiums in via Gradoli in Rome. The former SISDE general Quintino Spella, accused of misleading, died during the first degree.
Source: Vanity Fair

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