Banda Della Magliana - Far Right Ties and Mino Pecorelli's Assassination

Far Right Ties and Mino Pecorelli's Assassination

Some gang members, including founder Franco Giuseppucci, Maurizio Abbatino and Alessandro d'Ortenzi, were far right sympathizers. Crime, however, and not politics, was the main activity of the group, and some material incentives much needed to get them involved in this field. One of their first contact with the Italian neofascist movement was in summer 1978 — a few months after Aldo Moro's murder — in a villa of Rieti owned by criminologist, psychiatrist and neofascist professor Aldo Semerari. In exchange of financing his political activities, Aldo Semerari proposed psychiatric expertise to arrested gang members in order to help them be released.

However, the deal did not last long, as Aldo Semerari was assassinated on 1 April 1982 in Ottaviano (Province of Naples). He had made the same deal with Raffaele Cutolo's Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO), as well as with the rival organization of the Cutolo, the Nuova Famiglia (NF) headed by Carmine Alfieri. This pleased neither Umberto Ammaturo's family nor the NCO. Beside being a famous far right criminologist, Aldo Semerari was also member of Propaganda Due (P2) masonic lodge and maintained links with the SISMI, the Italian military intelligence agency.

More important links were found between the Banda della Magliana and the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR) far right terrorist group, in particular through Massimo Carminati, a NAR member who was a good customer of Franco Giuseppuci and Maurizio Abbatino's bar. Massimo Carminati quickly became a "pupil" of the gang, and introduced to them Valerio Fioravanti and Francesca Mambro, both of whom were accused of complicity in the 1980 Bologna massacre. The two criminal organizations quickly became closely linked, with the Banda della Magliana laundering the money obtained from NAR's hold-ups to finance their political activities, while the NAR helped the Banda in street activities (racket, drug transportation, etc.). However, their most mysterious "joint venture," which raised serious questions, concerned weapons: ammunition, guns and bombs belonging to both groups were surprisingly found in the basements of the Italian Health Ministry.

In the same basement were found ammunition cartridges of a brand not easy to find on the market (Getelot). Coming from the same lot were four bullets, of the same type and use, which marked them as the ones used for a specific homicide: Carmine Pecorelli, a journalist who had published allegations about Prime minister Giulio Andreotti's ties to the Mafia, and was murdered in 1979. Giulio Andreotti and his leading assistant Claudio Vitalone have been suspected in this assassination : Andreotti was convicted in November 2002 of ordering the murder of Pecorelli, and sentenced to twenty-four years imprisonment. But the eighty-three-year-old Andreotti was immediately released pending an appeal, and on 30 October 2003, an appeals court over-turned the conviction and acquitted Andreotti of the original murder charge.

During the trial, the Italian justice clearly proved the involvement of the banda della Magliana in Pecorelli's murder, although the person materially responsible for the killing, Massimo Carminati, was released. Also according to the judges, the trial proved "clear links between Claudio Vitalone and the banda della Magliana through the person of Enrico De Pedis," (alias Renatino, one of the leaders of the Banda della Magliana). They continued however by stating that the "probatory evidence was not unequivocal." Thus, due to insufficient evidence, Claudio Vitalone was released.