Piazza Fontana Bombing - Official Investigations and Trials

Official Investigations and Trials

Anarchist Pietro Valpreda was also arrested after a taxi driver identified him as the suspicious-looking client he had taken to the bank that day. After his alibi was judged insufficient, he was held for three years in preventive detention before being sentenced for the crime. Sixteen years later on appeal he was eventually exonerated after several miscarried trials.

Far-right Neo-fascist organization Ordine Nuovo, founded by Pino Rauti, was then suspected. On March 3, 1972, Franco Freda, Giovanni Ventura and Rauti were arrested and charged with planning the terrorist attacks of April 25, 1969 at the Trade Fair and Railway Station in Milan, and the August 8 and August 9, 1969 bombings of several trains, followed by the Piazza Fontana bombing, but were acquitted and no-one was ever successfully prosecuted.

Several elements brought the investigators to the theory that members of extreme right-wing groups were responsible for the bombings:

• The composition of the bombs used in Piazza Fontana was identical to that of the explosives that Ventura hid in a friend's home a few days after the attacks.
• The timers were traced to a stock of 50 Diehl Junghans timers bought on September 22, 1969 by Franco Freda in a Bologna store. Freda later explained that he bought the timers for Mohamed Selin Hamid, an alleged agent of Algerian secret services (whose existence has been denied by Algerian authorities) for the Palestinian resistance. Israel secret services declared that no timer of that kind has ever been used by Palestinian groups.
• The bags where the bombs were hidden had been bought in a shop in Padua, the same city in which Freda lived, a couple of days before the attacks.

In 1974 the trial was moved from Milan to Catanzaro. On October 4, 1978 the police discovered that Freda had disappeared from his Catanzaro apartment. On February 23, 1979 he was pronounced guilty for the Piazza Fontana bombing and the court sentenced him to life imprisonment. On August 23, 1979 Freda was captured in Costa Rica and extradited to Italy, after which several trials followed, and he was sentenced to 15 years of jail for "subversive association" on March 20, 1981, then acquitted on August 1, 1985 for lack of evidence.

In 1989, Stefano Delle Chiaie was arrested in Caracas, Venezuela and extradited to Italy to stand trial for his role in the bombing, but was acquitted by the Assise Court in Catanzaro in 1989, along with fellow suspect Massimiliano Fachini.

On June 20, 2001 Italian Ordine Nuovo members Carlo Maria Maggi (a physician), Delfo Zorzi and Giancarlo Rognoni were all convicted, but their convictions were overturned in March 2004. Carlo Di Giglio received immunity from prosecution in exchange for his information.

On May 3, 2005 the last trial ended with no one found guilty of the bombing.