Italy remembers neofascist youth killed by far leftists

(ANSA) - ROME, APR 29 - Italy on Monday remembered Sergio Ramelli, a 19-year-old neofascist militant who died in hospital on April 29, 1975 after being bludgeoned with a monkey wrench by eight far left militants on March 13 that year in one of the most serious acts of political street gang violence that accompanied the 'Years of Lead' of rightist and leftist terror from the late 1960 to the early 1980s.
    Ramelli, a member of the youth wing of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), was targeted by Workers Vanguard after his high-school teacher highlighted his unorthodox views of Communism.
    On the first anniversary of his death, on April 29, 1976, a 50-year-old MSI Milanese provincial chief and lawyer, Enrico Pedenovi, was murdered by members of the far left First Line group.
    Senate Speaker Ignazio La Russa, a bigwig in Premier Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, which descends from the MSI, and Milan's centre-left Democratic Party (PD) Mayor Giuseppe Sala, were among those commemorating Ramelli like every year on Friday, with Sala laying a wreath outside the building where the teenager died.
    La Russa, who recently said he had given away his bust of Mussolini, chided Sala for not wearing his tricolour mayor's sash, a mark of civic officialdom.
    Sala said he never wore it, not even for ceremonies remembering leftist youths who had been killed by neofascists.
    photo: Ramelli and Pedenovi (ANSA).