Bologna bombing 'subversive neofascist strategy' -Mattarella

(ANSA) - ROME, AUG 2 - Italian President Sergio Mattarella on Friday commemorated the deadly August 2, 1980 bombing of Bologna's train station - the "theatre of a ruthless neofascist subversive strategy".
    Expressing a "profound feeling of solidarity" to the victims' families and the city of Bologna on the 44th anniversary of the massacre, the president said such a strategy was "nourished by the complicity of subversive factions that attempted to attack the freedom conquered by Italians".
    He stressed that the deadly attack was "one of the most tragic events in our republican history".
    The Bologna massacre was a terrorist bombing of the Bologna Centrale railway station in Bologna, Italy, on the morning of 2 August 1980, which killed 85 people and wounded over 200.
    It was Italy's deadliest terrorist attack of the 25-year 'Years of Lead' of rightist and leftist militant violence.
    Several members of the neo-fascist terrorist organization Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR, Armed Revolutionary Nuclei) were sentenced for the bombing, although the group denied involvement.
    Other theories have been proposed, especially in correlation with the rightist 'strategy of tension' designed to keep the Italian Communist Party (PCI) out of power.
    The bombing is the fourth deadliest terrestrial terrorist attack in Western Europe behind the Nice attack in July 2016, the Paris attacks in November 2015, and the Madrid train bombings in March 2004. (ANSA).