The Bologna Bombing: Who & What Was the NAR?

NAR Blamed for the Bologna Massacre

Who and What Was the NAR?

by M. Fishwick

Before arriving at the history of the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari, NAR, which in turn cannot be successfully explained without presenting a brief outline history of the post-war national struggle in Italy, it would be equally useful to review the general background of Italy in which the history is set.

Overview

After the destruction and chaos of the Second World War, Italy found herself to be very much a part of the frontline theatre of a titanic life and death struggle between the Soviet sphere of interest and the Atlantic Alliance.

Liberals, the Christian Democrats backed by the USA and NATO, held precariously onto the reins of national government against a widespread and militant Communist base consisting of former partisans and their areas of support.

Surviving members of the Fascisti had re-grouped under the banner of the Italian Social Movement, MSI, against a backdrop of persecution directed by the Liberal State allied with the bloodlust of former partisans, and they had begun to rebuild social, cultural and political structures.

Many parts of Italy, if not controlled by Communists, fell increasingly under the power and influence of the Mafia and similar crime syndicates that had been all but wiped out by Mussolini but were now free again to re-exert their dominion.

In similar manner Masonry, all but destroyed as an operational entity by Mussolini, re-asserted itself on an organisational level and spread its tentacles widely throughout the structures of the Italian State and Big Business.

The Atlantic Alliance developed underground guerrilla cells and ammunition dumps as part of its Operation Gladio network, and the Soviet sphere aided Red Terrorist cells throughout western Europe.

From 1945 to the mid-1980's Italy was the scene of a lingering chaos, verging upon civil war. Italy became a pawn in the geo-political machinations and conflict that existed firstly between the USSR and NATO, and secondly between the USSR/Arab nations and the USA/Israeli axis.

Bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, hijackings, and arms-trafficking were a feature of life common to Italy for four decades after the end of World War Two due largely to the geo-political Strategy of Tension instigated by the CIA.

Targetted kidnappings, bombings and assassinations were routinely carried out and claimed by the Red Brigades and kindred groups. Several indiscriminate bombings have never been resolved but were automatically blamed upon 'neo-fascists' - convenient scapegoats who were hated by all the major powers at play. But it made no sense for weak and powerless 'neo-fascists' to engage in such immoral, indiscriminate, killing when they prided themselves on being a movement from, of, and for the Italian people. Such senseless acts of indicrimate horror could achieve nothing except facilitate further hatred towards them and result in their further repression.

The intense investigations into terrorism during the 1980's and 1990's eventually brought various State Secrets to light that explained and made sense of these murderous and indiscriminate bombing atrocities. They were designed to reign in the Christian Democrats to the US-Israeli axis and force them away from agreements made with the Italian Communists and from relationships built with Socialist Arab countries such as Libya.

Amongst other things the Christian Democrats had forged a secret agreement with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine so that the Italian government would turn a blind eye to PFLP related arms trafficking and other activities in return for the PFLP not launching attacks in Italy.

The Bologna railway station massacre was the final act in a series of indiscriminate bombings that shook Italy during those decades. This time, the ramifications of the act spread far beyond Italy due to the high level of casualties and because a number of casualties amongst the 85 dead and two hundred or so injured were foreign tourists. The international outcry was enormous.

As usual, the atrocity was immediately blamed on 'neo-fascists'. Italian Prime Minister of the time, and former Minister of the Interior in charge of the Italian Secret Service organisations, Francesco Cossiga, announced the "fact" to the Italian Senate and it led to a severe persecution of young nationalists that included mass round-ups, long imprisonments without trial, torture, severe beatings and deaths during arrest or whilst in custody. Many of those who managed to successfully escape the persecution found themselves exiled abroad for many years. After the many years of investigation into the bombing Francesco Cossiga now publicly states that he is certain that 'neo-fascists' had nothing to do with the terrorist outrage.

As the investigations into the terrorist activity surrounding Bologna progressed during the 1980's and 1990's the secret agreements of the Italian State with sections of the Palestinian resistance became known, although never officially admitted until 2008. With the benefit of this knowledge, and especially with its official admittance at long last, it is easily understood, for example, why the presence of Thomas Kram, a leading activist of the German Revolutionary Cells and ally of the PLPF, who arrived in Bologna the night before the bombing and left Bologna immediately after the bombing, was hidden from public view by the Italian State investigators for many years.

The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that either Kram had some involvement in planting the bomb or that the bomb was planted in order to implicate Kram, and hence the PFLP, bringing pressure upon the Christian Democrat government of Italy to publicly condemn and suppress the Palestinian arms trafficking network and re-orientate themselves to the United States/Israeli axis.

As always, the fundamental question to be asked is who benefits? When the question is considered it becomes difficult to conclude other than that the atrocity was not the work of a 'neo-fascist' network or a Palestinian network, neither of which had anything to gain from such actions but much to lose, but was typically the work of either the CIA or Israeli Mossad.

War on the Streets: The Years of Lead

In order to trace the origin and development of NAR, the armed gang led by Valerio Fioravanti to which the guilt of the Bologna massacre was attributed by the media and politicians and then upheld by the criminal courts, it is necessary to return to the MSI.

The MSI had been formed in 1946 by former minor officials of the Fascist regime. Just ten years later the ideas and principles of its members and supporters began to be severely compromised and then subverted as its leaders sought to build an alliance with Christian Democrats and conservatives. The MSI began to pursue an Atlanticist orientation and inevitably a number of non-compromising associations formed from within its ranks. A number of groups, such as the Fronte Universitario d’Azione Nazionale, FUAN, stayed under the MSI umbrella whilst pursuing an almost autonomous direction, whilst other groups of militants such as Ordine Nuovo and Avanguardia Nazionale left MSI and went their own way.

By the 1970's the MSI had become an object of derision for the younger generation of Italian patriots. It was increasingly becoming something to be despised and hated. The reason was not merely the ideological sell-out of the MSI leadership but, incredibly, their point-blank refusal to make use their many contacts amongst the Establishment parties and police in order to provide protection for local headquarters and street activists in face of an increasingly frequent level of, often deadly, Red violence against the MSI rank and file.

For example:

7th July, 1972: A typical Red "Commando Raid" was made upon the house of a member of the MSI youth organisation, Fronte della Gioventù. The FdG activist, Carlo Falvella, of Salerno, was stabbed to death.

16th April, 1973: An arson attack was conducted upon the house of MSI member, Mario Mattei, in Primavalle, Rome. Two of his sons, Stefano and Virgilio aged 10 and 22, were murdered in the attack.

28th February, 1975: A Greek student, a member of the MSI's university group FUAN, Mikis Mantakas, was shot and murdered in Rome.

13th March, 1975: FdG member, Sergio Ramelli, was shot dead outside Mass in Milan.

30th September, 1977: Hundreds of Reds violently besieged the local MSI headquarters in Balduina, Rome. The fighting lasted for hours until the small number of FdG activists inside the building found an escape route. Chased by the Red mob, and fleeing for their lives, future NAR activists Christiano Fioravanti and Alesandro Alibrandi fired upon the chasing mob killing one of them, a member of the murderous Communist group Lotta Continua.

7th January, 1978: FdG activists Franco Bigonzetti and Francesco Ciavatta were shot dead in a hail of machine gun bullets whilst leaving the MSI headquarters in Via Acca Larentia, Rome. A third young activist is wounded. The Roman MSI gathered in the street to pay honour to the victims and to protest at the massacre of its young activists. A captain of the Carabinieri, Edoardo Siveri, drew his pistol at the increasingly angry demonstrators and shot dead young FdG member Stefano Recchioni. He lay dying in the arms of future NAR activist Francesca Mambro.

In such circumstances young nationalists were forced to act to provide a measure of necessary safety and protection for themselves, their families, and their comrades. The testimonies of young militants of the time are striking:

"The physical struggle for us had value as a test of strength, but also the problem is that we need to contextualise it and at the time there were something like 5,000 attacks and 600-700 deaths, at least 5 violent events per day, and it was not possible even to affix posters without a physical clash... In Italy between 1973 and 1982, at least, we lived in a condition of real civil war hence it was not possible to reject a fight; it meant giving up going out into the streets.

The problem is also to understand when and where the civil war originated... there were the ex-partisans who were teaching that to kill a fascist is not a crime, and then there were groups like Avanguardia Operaia which first theorised and then practised the elimination of fascists. On a TV programme the other day they said that on the extreme left the armed groups were started in self-defence. However, the first person to be beaten with a bar in Italy, Spano, who ended up in a wheelchair, was beaten up by the student movement, the first person to be killed by a bottle full of sand was Ermanno Vinturini in Genoa, the first person to be shot dead was Mikis Mantakas in Rome. I believe that even the first person to be knifed was Falvella in Salerno... on the left the situation turned really nasty, therefore the taste for civil war was developed by the extreme left.. I mean to say that the left developed a strategy of hatred, this is important... on the left there was a culture of hatred, because if we look at what happened in Italy in 1919-1921, they used to kill in a heinous way, they dismembered alive those whom they took prisoners during the civil war."
Gabriele Adinolfi, former leader of Terza Posizione. .

"In the late 1970's the political scene was even harder and access to weapons became a matter of survival. Naturally we were particularly vulnerable to the slogan 'to kill a fascist is not a crime'. It became impossible to go to school without risk. In addition, we had also been betrayed by the party leaders. That bitter struggle completely ruined the lives of many young people. Some were murdered, others ended up in prison with very serious penalties in comparison to their crimes... From the police we received only beatings and torture whilst leftists acted with impunity."
Massimo Morsello, (Requiescat in pace), former activist of Fronte Universitario d’Azione Nazionale, Via Siena.

"It was a very dangerous period for those who were active in politics, both on the left and on the right. There was a lot of violence. I remember that when we went out at night my mother would wait for us until two or three in the morning and she used to tell us of the many explosions she had heard. It was not infrequent to open a paper and find news of ten bombs which had exploded in one day. Where I lived we had five attacks, at Francesca's house there were two, they put a bomb on the windowsill in the mezzanine room where she slept, aged eighteen and with two younger brothers.... Then there was this episode which she witnessed in person of a captain of the Carabinieri who killed one of ours. He did it in front of all the leaders of the MSI. And the whole MSI pretended not to have seen. And the reactions in the papers the next day were extremely harsh, but when Francesca said, 'We need to report what we saw, we need to go to the police', nobody wanted to go with her, because for the party to lose the votes of the police force was too serious... And so for me, for her, for all the others, this triggered a final revolt against the MSI which had sold us out".
Valerio Fioravanti, former leader of NAR.

"The 1970s were days when left-wing kids were forever beating up right-wing ones and vice versa. At the beginning, I had friends on both sides. But the right somehow always seemed to get the worst of it. I couldn't help identifying with that." And after she witnessed the cold-blooded murder of Stefano Recchioni by a policeman: "I swore I would never go anywhere without a gun."
Francesca Mambro, former leader of NAR

"During the 1970's, in ninety-eight percent of all cases, the radical right played the role of victims... We were victims of the political situation, of the political unrepresentativeness of our community - a community subject to fierce reprisals."
Marcello de Angelis, Italian Senator, former activist of Terza Posizione.

The "fierce reprisals" against young nationalists for daring to oppose the Christian Democrat/Communist Party status quo came from the police and the Secret State as well as from the Reds.

On 10th January, 1979, the first anniversary of the Acca Larentia massacre that saw the murder of two young activists of the FdG by Reds, and another murdered by police, the FdG and FUAN held a protest of remembrance outside the Christian Democrat headquarters in Centocelle, in the centre of Rome. The protest passed without incident and the demonstrators began to quietly disperse and return home. An unmarked police car targetted two stragglers Alberto Giaquinto, of FdG, and Massimo Morsello, of FUAN. After following them for a short distance two plainclothes policemen got out of the car and followed the boys on foot. Suddenly one of them, Alessio Speranza, pulled out a gun and shot Alberto Giaquinto in the head. At first the police claimed that Giaquinto brandished a gun, but the story had to be dropped because there were too many impartial and independent witnesses at the murder scene. There was no gun. Shortly afterwards another GdF militant, Stefano Cecchin, was murdered in a drive-by shooting by whilst sitting at a pavement cafe. The primary witness to the Gianquilo murder, his comrade Massimo Morsello, insisted, despite threats, upon testifying against the police. For Massimino's trouble the policemen were later found not guilty and an arrest warrant was consequently issued against Morsello in revenge for him pursuing the trial against the policemen. Massimo managed to flee Italy and was later found guilty in abstentia of the 'crime' of subversive association and armed gang and sentenced to ten years imprisonment.

It was the murder of the young nationalist, Stefano Recchioni, by the police in January, 1978, that finally drove thousands of young activists completely away from the MSI. The leadership of MSI had even refused to demand the arrest of Siveri. Something was rotten to the core.

At that point most of the former MSI-GdF militants began to engage themselves in political struggle with the radical and innovative nationalist group Terza Posizione. Others gave in to despair and turned their back upon political struggle in favour of a hopeless and nihilistic armed struggle. The reference point of the latter became the embryonic NAR which was built upon a small circle of close-knit friends around Valerio Fioravanti. Fioravanti began to direct NAR actions against everyone and anyone whom they perceived as an enemy, including, before long, Terza Posizione.

Former NAR leader, Valerio Fiorantini explains:

"... in reality our target were not the Carabinieri, our aim was to kill our treacherous father, in a mythological sense, to kill the MSI which had sold us out... it is true that the characteristic of the NAR, even from a criminal statistics point of view, was that of a group which in percentage terms shot at members of the police forces more often than all the groups of the extreme left. But what is really serious, from an ethical point of view, is that in reality our hatred was not directed at the police, our wish was to get the MSI into trouble once and for all. And also to break that mechanism that we had seen also with the radical groups, according to which the big groups use the small ones to acquire more power for themselves and later abandon them when the time is right. This is what was happening with Terza Posizione."

In 1976 an independent student organisation, Lotta Studentesca, was founded in Rome at the library of Walter Spedicato by 17 year old Roberto Fiore, 20 year old Giuseppe Dimitri, and 22 year old Gabriele Adinolfi. It quickly built up a solid activist base amongst young Romans disillusioned with the ideological sell-out of the MSI. Chief amongst them were brothers Nazzareno (Nanni) and Marcello de Angelis. In 1978 Lotta Studentesca broadened its horizons with the help of Francesco Mangiameli, a literature professor from Sicily and former MSI politician, to organise as a national movement. It changed its name to Terza Posizione. TP began to recruit heavily from the hundreds of militants then leaving MSI in droves and soon established itself throughout Italy.

From its beginning TP took an independent line in everything under the slogan "Neither Red Front Nor Reaction". Because of its intransigent ideological stance, its incredible vitality in terms of innovative and miltant activity, and its disciplined and hierarchical structure, it soon became an object of hatred not just for the Italian State and the Reds, but also for the right-wing MSI and the embryonic NAR who preached and practised an anarchic "armed spontaneity".

At one stage Gianfranco Fini, then National Secretary of the MSI's youth wing, even encouraged its militants to physically oppose TP on the streets. It only resulted in more militants turning their backs upon MSI and becoming active with the growing TP.

Whilst, on the one hand, Terza Posizione was hated by the MSI leadership for presenting a militant ideological alternative to their pro-U.S. and Statist orientation, it began to be hated in equal measure by Fioravanti and his close friends who, after leaving FdG, began to publicly use the acronym NAR in specific reference to themselves. For the wild, hot-headed, youths of NAR, Terza Posizione was not militant enough. NAR wanted through its actions to encourage an anarchic form of guerrilla warfare on the streets, directed largely against the police and Establishment figures; a black version of the Red Brigades. To do this they needed to influence the militants but Terza Posizione was successfully orientating them into constructive political, social, economic and community actions aimed at building a living cultural reference in opposition to the moribund and decayed ideas of right and left. The success of Terza Posizione was preventing the nihilistic influence of NAR from spreading to any great degree.

NAR leader Francesca Mambro explained: "We were a thorn in everybody's sides. The political right wanted nothing to do with us. The extra-parliamentary right, the grown-up Fascist bands, thought we were just a bunch of snotty kids. We simply didn't count".

From that moment, from virtually the beginning of Terza Posizione, TP became an object of hatred for NAR. The TP leadership had made clear in its publications that whilst it was always in favour of self-defence against aggressive attacks, it was steadfastly opposed to the immoral "armed spontaneity" called for by the nascent NAR.

Marcello de Angelis, Italian Senator and former TP militant: "With NAR relations were so bad that 'Giusva' [Valerio] Fioravanti had decided to take out our leaders in order to take all the power of the area."

The watershed in the short, but legendary, life of Terza Posizione came late in 1979. Some of its members, including one of the founders, 'Peppe' Dimitri, began to leave TP and gravitate towards the orbit of NAR. Dimitri and two others were arrested, in December 1979, in the act of transporting boxes of machine guns, rifles and hand-grenades.

Although Terza Posizione publicly disassociated itself from the incident the Italian State were presented with the excuse that they were looking for in order to destroy TP. Even though Peppe Dimitri confirmed that his clandestine action had been unknown to TP, the State set to work and launched an 'investigation' attempting to establish that there existed two levels of Terza Posizione: one level being militant and extra-parliamentary but above board, the other clandestine and involved in acts of terrorism. Nothing could be established but the State seized its opportunity in September 1980 whilst the nation was in a mood for "fascist blood" in wake of the Bologna atrocity. Arrest warrants against TP leaders and militants were issued on 23rd September, 1980, under the pretext of the peculiar Italian 'catch-all' crime of 'subversive association and armed gang'.

Dozens of young people were rounded-up in a series of brutal raids, whilst dozens more received warning just in time and managed to evade the dragnet. Some, including Roberto Fiore, Gabriele Adinolfi, Walter Spedicato and Marcello de Angelis managed to flee abroad and spent years, even decades, in exile. Others, such as Nanni de Angelis, were caught before they could leave the country and suffered severe beatings and, in many cases, five years in jail without trial before being released after being found not guilty of what they were charged with. Nanni de Angelis was murdered inside a police-cell on 5th October, 1980, after having being arrested and beaten senseless by the police earlier that day.

In January 1981 members of the Italian Secret Military Intelligence Service, SISMI, directed by P2 Masonic Lodge 'godfather' Licio Gelli, attempted to conclude the State operation against TP by planting a suitcase containing weapons and the same type of explosive that was used in the Bologna massacre, on the Taranto-Milano Express train along with a fabricated paper trail implicating Terza Posizione leaders Roberto Fiore and Gabriele Adinolfi. This set-up, by using the same difficult to obtain explosive, was intended not just to implicate Fiore and Adinolfi in terrorist activity but also to fabricate a link between NAR, who had already been blamed by SISMI for the August 1980 Bologna massacre, and Terza Posizione.

Two very high-ranking SISMI officers, General Pietro Musumeci and Colonel Giuseppe Belmonte, SISMI officer Francesco Pazienza, along with a SISMI operative, Massimo Carminati, who was working within both NAR and the Magliana mafia organisation, as well as P2 godfather Licio Gelli, were all later found guilty and jailed for preparing and instigating the black operation.

Interestingly, a phone-call received by the Italian press agency ANSA a little over three hours after the Bologna explosion, and greatly publicised at the time, claimed the Bologna bomb on behalf of NAR. The phone-call was later found to have originated from the Florence office of SISMI.

The State persecution of Terza Posizione in wake of the mass round-up of nationalists provided just the opportunity that NAR had been looking for in order to destroy TP for their own purposes. A series of murderous attacks were launched against TP by Fioravanti's gang which first resulted in the cold-blooded killing of Terza Posizione leader Francesco Mangiameli in Rome on 9th September, 1980. Hatred of the TP leadership was so intense, and so insane, that Fioravanti had even planned to travel to Sicily in order to murder Mangiameli's wife and young daughter at their home. Fioraventi was prevented from doing so by the early discovery of Francesco Mangiemeli's hidden body. The discovery foiled Fioravanti's plan to eradicate the Terza Posizione leadership before they realised what was going on, allowing defensive measures to be taken. Knowing this, Fioravanti and Mambro then made public their intent to kill Fiore and Adinolfi. Several young TP militants such as Luca Perucci and Marco Pizzaro were also murdered by NAR.

The State show-trial against Terza Posizione for 'subversive association and armed gang', concluded on 12th March, 1985, with NAR leaders such as Valerio Fioravanti and Francesca Mambro being falsely presented by the Court as members of Terza Posizione in order to keep up the State-fabricated appearance of a TP-NAR 'link'. Fiore, Adinolfi and de Angelis, who were all safely in exile at the time, were sentenced to 9, 8 and 6 years respectively, in abstentia. The sentences were later reduced by the Court of Appeal and timed-out.

Although the fabricated sentence has not yet been overturned, or the TP men officially pardoned, the President of the Parliamentary Commission of Enquiry on Terrorism in Italy clarified on public record during its 77th Session, 17th January, 2001, that their conviction, and that of Massimo Morsello who was later convicted of the same charge in a trial against NAR, was on the basis of 'subversive association' and not membership of an 'armed gang'.

Massimo Morsello's inclusion in the NAR trial, which was held after the TP trial had concluded, was an act of revenge for him daring to become an official witness against a policeman in regard to the cold-blooded murder of Alberto Giaquinto. His inclusion in the NAR trial was based solely on the 'strength' that he was a member of the FUAN university group that was based at the MSI'svia Sienna headquarters in Rome. The same MSI premises had been frequented by the Fioravanti brothers, Francesca Mambro, and other members of the FdG circle that would later evolve into NAR. Not-with-standing the fact that literally hundreds of other people also regularly frequented the same MSI headquarters in Rome, Morsello was targetted on this 'evidence' and received a ten year sentence in abstentia for this extremely tenuous guilt by association.

The official request for the trial of Terza Posizione submitted to the Roman Judiciary by State Investigators actually explains the basis of 'subversion' that Terza Posizione was considered 'guilty' of.

Firstly, in Chapter B3 it is made clear that: "The subversive aims and conduct of members of the Third Position in propagating the ideology of the movement through the dissemination of newspapers, written hand-outs, collection of memberships and building sympathy in the neighbourhoods, must be fully considered and understood as the normal archetype of the movement."

Then in Chapter B4 one reads that TP should be suppressed because it presents a potential danger to the personality of the Liberal Democratic State!

"It is clear here that, within the penal code, the association is facing charges precisely because of the particularly dangerous nature that it presents... with the result that the commission or consumption of unlawful acts that fulfill the purpose of the movement are not necessary. The indictment, in fact, seeks to avoid determining conditions for perpetration of crimes against the personality of the State."

And then:

"The Third Position is a clearly functional organisation in respect to achieving its subversive end. As already mentioned, the associations of the neighbourhood and those that exist in schools are, for Third Position, the appropriate structures from which the avant-garde transmit their values and embryonic structures to form an alternative to the constitutional development of the people... The task of these associations is to serve as centres of reference and proselytising activity in the name of the principles of which the members conduct themselves. But also to create the awakening of a popular consciousness. The end is clearly to transform civil disobedience into popular organisational education and to build a stable and decisive alternative that completes the organisation as a statelet."

In other words, the persecutions and trials directed against Terza Posizione by the Italian State constituted a politically-motivated repression launched to protect the Liberal Democratic State against subversive ideas and a growing network of alternative and self-sufficient counter-power structures within communities that increasingly rejected the Liberal Idea and the Liberal Regime.

A Short History of NAR Activity

The Armed Revolutionary Nuclei was founded in 1978 by a small group of friends belonging to the youth organisation of the MSI: Valerio Fioravanti, his brother Cristiano Fioravanti, Francesco Anselmi, and Alessandro Alibrandi. Several others, such as Francesca Mambro and SISMI agent provocateur Massimo Carminati, would later become central to its criminal activities.

Excluding the 85 deaths resulting from the Bologna railway station bombing, which all the former members of NAR deny involvement in even to this day, the NAR reign of terror claimed more than 30 lives during its four year operational period from 1978 to 1982.

According to the testimony of Cristiano Fioravanti, who in return for the dropping of charges gave evidence against his brother and former friends upon being arrested in 1982, the first organised action of the group took place on 28th February, 1978, when they ambushed and shot dead a member of the Communist terror group Lotta Continua, and injured another.

6th March, 1978: NAR raided an armoury to acquire more weapons, an action that resulted in the death of Francesco Anselmi. In 1975 Anselmi had spent three months in a coma that resulted in a severe loss of eyesight after one of many attacks upon him by Communists. At the armoury he was unaware that a guard had managed to free himself and he was consequently shot in the back.

18th March, 1978: NAR ambushed and shot dead two Communist activists at a social centre.

17th May, 1978: the Rome armoury was attacked in an act of revenge for Anselmi's death.

Valerio Fioravanti then enlisted in the army and managed to supply NAR with 144 hand-grenades stolen from the armoury before being drummed out and jailed for eight-months for dereliction of duty and stealing an army truck.

9th January, 1979: NAR set fire to the premises of a small left-wing radio station and raked it with machine-gun fire, injuring four employees.

15th March, 1979: an arms raid was conducted at Omnia Sport in the centre of Rome.

16th June, 1979: the Communist Party headquarters in a district of Rome was attacked with two hand-grenades and several rounds of gun-fire. 25 people were injured.

17th December, 1979: an innocent man, Antonio Leandro, was murdered due to mistaken identity in the attempted targetted killing of a lawyer.

6th February, 1980: a young policeman was murdered in cold-blood in order to steal his machine-gun.

30th March, 1980: a raid was conducted upon a small military post to steal weapons. A sargeant was wounded.

28th May, 1980: a policeman was killed and two colleagues badly injured in an ambush.

23rd June, 1980: NAR killed the Deputy Prosecutor of Rome.

2nd August, 1980: 85 civilians were murdered by a bomb at Bologna railway station. A phone call was received by a news agency claiming the action on behalf of NAR, resulting in a wild mass persecution of nationalists by the Italian State. Many innocent young men and women were forced into exile or imprisoned, sometimes for several years, without being convicted of any offence. An official investigation later traced the phone-call to the Florence offices of the Italian Secret Military Intelligence Service, SISMI.

9th September, 1980: Third Position leader Francesco Mangiameli was targetted and killed by NAR.

5th February, 1981: three NAR activists were challenged by two carabienieri whilst collecting weapons from a secret arms dump near Padua. The two policemen were killed and NAR's leader, Valerio Fioravanti, was badly wounded in both legs. He was taken to an address in Padua by Francesca Mambro and Alessandro Alibrandi and captured later that night after phoning for an ambulance.

8th April, 1981: NAR founder Cristiano Fioravanti was arrested and testified against his colleagues in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

30th September, 1981: NAR killed Third Position militant Marco Pizzaro.

21st October, 1981: NAR ambushed and killed a Digos (General Investigations Division and special Operations) police captain.

5th December, 1981: NAR founder Alessandro Alibrandi was killed in a gunfight with police.

5th March, 1982: Francesca Mambro was injured and captured by police after a shoot-out during an attempted bank robbery.

5th May, 1982: George Vale, the last remaining fugitive of Fioravanti's close circle of murderous companions was tracked down by police and killed during a siege.

Despite NAR leaders Fioravanti and Mambro readily acknowledging NAR's involvement in the murderous activities above, and many more besides, they have always denied that they or their organisation had any involvement in the massacre at Bologna railway station. They continue to deny it to this very day despite having been convicted and having served two decades of their lives in prison for it.