ITALY: SISMI informer linked to Milan bombing campaign
01 January 2002
An informer for the Italian military secret service (SISMI) was arrested on 7 April 2001 in connection with a bomb that exploded on 22 September 1998 in front of a Guardia di Finanza (Customs) office and a device that was planted in Bocconi University in Milan on April 1999, that did not explode. Luca Giannasi received an 8-month sentence in La Spezia (Liguria) for possession of explosives but was acquitted of the more serious charges of organising and carrying out the bombings, for which the prosecuting magistrate asked that he receive a 16-year sentence. A statement from key witness Giuseppe Fregosi, a Lega Nord (LN) member and associate of Giannasi who admitted to providing him with one and a half kilograms of explosive between December 1997 and May 1998, was not allowed as evidence, because he failed to repeat his allegations in court. The lawyer defending Giannasi accepted that new rules on evidence, the so-called "fair trial" regulation, made "the prosecution's main source impossible to use", although he insisted that Fregosi was unreliable. According to Fregosi, Giannasi said that he would build explosive devices as part of a plan to destabilise the country, and aimed to turn the LN security service (green shirts) into a paramilitary group. The case is particularly significant because it was alleged that he organised the bombings to accredit himself with the secret services. He allegedly told SISMI between June and September 1998 that bombings in Milan by Turin anarchists were imminent, in response to a series of arrests against anarchist squatters in Turin. The bomb found in Bocconi University was accompanied by a leaflet from the unknown Nuclei di Guerriglia Antirazzista (Anti-Racist Guerrilla Units). It is alleged that Giannasi told SISMI that three Milan anarchists were responsible for the bomb planted in front of the Customs office. After investigations followed the anarchist trail unsuccessfully, Giuseppe Fregosi, a Lega Nord member and associate of Giannasi, was arrested in La Spezia on 25 June 1999 with ammunition for an armoured tank in his car.
Corriere della Sera 21-22.4.99, 28.4.00, 26.4.00, 22.11.01, 15.2.02; www.repubblica.it 14.2.02.