ITALY: The chief investigator into a south Italy school bombing says mafia involvement in the incident is unlikely

Record ID: 357512

  • Title: ITALY: The chief investigator into a south Italy school bombing says mafia involvement in the incident is unlikely
  • Date: 21st May 2012
  • Summary: BRINDISI, APULIA REGION, ITALY (MAY 20, 2012) (REUTERS) POLICE AND CIVIL PROTECTION WORKERS AT SITE OUTSIDE SCHOOL FLOWERS LEFT OUTSIDE SCHOOL SCHOOL ENTRANCE CORDONED OFF (SOUNDBITE) (Italian) BRINDISI CHIEF PROSECUTOR MARCO DINAPOLI SAYING: "At the moment we can't exclude anything. Nothing. I said, we can't exclude anything. The most probable hypothesis is that it w
  • Embargoed: 5th June 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Italy
  • Country: Italy
  • Topics: Crime
  • Reuters ID: LVAAVRQQDSB9JJ6MAYKSZCQZO3IT
  • Story Text: The bomb attack which killed a teenaged girl and wounded 10 others in the southern Italian town of Brindisi was probably done by an individual with no links to the mafia, a senior official said on Sunday (May 20).
    The attack on the Francesca Morvillo Falcone school, a vocational training institute offering courses in fashion, tourism and social services, has horrified Italy.
    Thousands have taken to the streets in demonstrations of sympathy for the school and the family of Melissa Bassi, the teenager who died in the explosion.
    "At the moment we can't exclude anything. Nothing. I said, we can't exclude anything. The most probable hypothesis is that it was an isolated act," Marco Dinapoli, the Brindisi chief prosecutor who is leading the investigation, told reporters on Sunday. He said police already had an identikit of the suspect.
    "He is someone who knows about electronics because the device, even if not particularly complex, was not something just anybody could put together. I personally wouldn't have been able to do it. My colleague wouldn't have been able to do it and I think most of you wouldn't have been able to do it. From what the explosives experts told me, it was a bomb that required a certain degree of know-how," he said, but refused to give details about the person believed to have carried out the attack.
    Dinapoli added that no claim of responsibility had been received.
    Early suspicions pointed at organised crime, largely because the school was named after the wife of murdered anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone and the attack took place days before the 20th anniversary of the couple's death in a bomb attack in Sicily.
    However as the investigation has proceeded, the idea that either the Sicilian mafia or the local version known as the United Sacred Crown, might mount such a high profile attack has appeared increasingly unlikely.
    Dinapoli said investigators had acquired "significant" video evidence which suggested that one man had set off the device, which exploded as pupils at the school were getting off a bus and arriving for the start of lessons on Saturday (May 19) morning.
    He declined to describe the video evidence but said it showed a single individual activating a remote control of some kind to detonate a rudimentary bomb made up of three gas canisters hidden in a container outside the school gates.
    Whoever was behind it, the deadly attack on a school was a potent symbol for an ageing country grappling with economic decline and struggling to regain confidence in its future.
    Italy's collective nerves were already on edge after a series of attacks on public institutions, including the main tax and debt collection agency which prompted Interior Minister Anna Maria Cancellieri to step up security at a series of key sites.
    As the economic crisis has hit hard, most visibly through a series of high-profile suicides of struggling small businessmen, there have been fears of a return to the kind of violence seen during the 1970s "Years of Lead", referring to the vast numbers of bullets fired in attacks.
    As well as the attacks on tax agency Equitalia, an anarchist group claimed responsibility for shooting the chief executive of nuclear engineering group Ansaldo Nucleare in the leg earlier this month.
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