Peteano massacre

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Peteano massacre
Part of Years of Lead (Italy)
The car bomb after the explosion
Location	Sagrado, Italy
Date	May 31, 1972
Attack type	Explosion
Deaths	3
Injured	2
Perpetrators	Carlo Cicuttini Vincenzo Vinciguerra
Motive	Neo-fascist terrorism

The Peteano massacre was a terrorist act of far right political origin committed on May 31, 1972 in Peteano, a fraction of Sagrado (Gorizia) which resulted in the death of three carabinieri (the brigadier Antonio Ferraro, the carabinieri Donato Poveromo and Franco Dongiovanni) and the injury of two others (Lieutenant Angelo Tagliari and the Brigadier Giuseppe Zazzaro).

The five servicemen were drawn to check on a suspicious car which turned out to be a car bomb which exploded when attempts were made to open the door to which his trigger was connected.

The perpetrators of the attack were Vincenzo Vinciguerra (guilty confess), Carlo Cicuttini and , members of the ;^[1] exponents of the armed forces and of the police also ended up under investigation for attempts to misdirect the investigation through the opening of lines of inquiry, later revealed to be inconsistent, towards organizations and groups of left and far left. The same secretary of the Giorgio Almirante was accused of having favored the escape and hiding in Spain of one of the perpetrators of the attack, Carlo Cicuttini, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in in absentia. Cicuttini began serving his sentence in 1998, but for health reasons he was released from prison and died in 2010, while Vinciguerra served his life sentence.

History[]

The period in which this blood event took place was in a precise and delicate historical-political context: on May 7, 1972 the had taken place, which had assigned the leadership of the country to a new executive chaired by Giulio Andreotti, while the occurred on 17 May. The political debate was still turbulent, and was accompanied by feared attempts at coup d'état. Before Peteano, there were several terrorist attacks and massacres of fascist origin, in conjunction with the tensions linked to the groups of the extra-parliamentary left that had undertaken the armed struggle, there was a climate of tension and concern within the parties. politicians and government, a first step towards what has been called "theory of opposite extremisms".

The night of May 31, at 22:35, an anonymous phone call reached the switchboard of the emergency service of the Carabinieri station of Gorizia: to receive it and to register it was the switchboard operator Domenico La Malfa. The text of the communication in dialectal language is as follows^[2]::

Hello? Look, I would like to tell you that there is a car with two holes on the windshield in the road from Poggio Terza Armata to Savogna ... the x is a 500 ...

Three gazelles of the carabinieri arrived on the marked place, who found the white Fiat 500 with the two holes on the windscreen, as the anonymous informant had communicated in dialect. The first patrol that is sent is that of the Gradisca carabinieri, with the pinned Mango and the carabiniere Dongiovanni. Ten minutes later the two are on site and find the Cinquecento number plate GO 45902. It is visible in a dirt lane, immediately after a curve, at kilometer 5. Mango decides to call his officer, Lieutenant Tagliari, who also leaves accompanied by the brigadier Antonio Ferraro and the carabiniere Donato Poveromo and arrive on the spot with a second gazelle at 23:05, then joined by a third patrol from Gorizia.^[3]

The carabinieri Antonio Ferraro, Donato Poveromo and Franco Dongiovanni attempted to open the hood of the vehicle, causing the car to explode and being killed, while two others were seriously injured.

Investigations[]

Colonel , the old right-hand man of the general , was placed to direct the investigation on the matter. Mingarelli immediately directed his investigation into the Lotta Continua circles of Trento, but the investigations did not obtain the expected results: the Milanese judiciary received information according to which the attack would be carried out by a group neo-fascist terrorist, which also included , a militant killed in an attempted hijacking of a plane at Ronchi dei Legionari airport in the following October.

The information had been given by , meanwhile arrested for the : the colonel however discarded the Milanese indication, as an order from the invited him to suspend investigations into the far-right terrorist group.^{[citation needed]} The colonel, with his "right arm" captain Antonino Chirico, directed the investigative attentions towards six young people, leading them to trial: according to Mingarelli they would take revenge on some rude people suffered by the carabinieri.

The proposed motive did not convince the judges, who acquitted the six young people, who, once free, denounced Mingarelli for the false accusations, initiating a new investigation against police officers and magistrates for having diverted the investigations. Meanwhile, the investigation of the massacre was directed towards the neo-fascist circles.

References[]