Arrests in Italy

MILAN

Five comrades were arrested in Milan on November 14 2009, accused of robbery and of perpetrating violence. The episode occurred when the comrades refused to pay for some photocopies in the CUSL bookshop, the site of Comunione e Liberazione (CL) inside the Statale University in Milan. At the moment four of the comrades are under house arrest and one is being held in San Vittore prison.
CL is a right-wing catholic youth group, which has exercised a strong influence on the Italian political landscape since it was formed in the Seventies. Originally linked to the Christian-Democratic party of Giulio Andreotti, the politicians who governed Italy for forty years after the second world war, the ‘ciellini’ can be considered as one of the protagonists, along with the Vatican, the political apparatus and the mafia, of the scandals and obscure plots characterizing Italian history from the late sixties to the early nineties: from the ‘strategy of terror’ to the Gladio, from the secret societies (notably Licio Gelli’s P2) to the attempted military coups.
It was to defend a meeting of CL that the police shot dead student Francesco Lorusso in Bologna in 1977. Still in Bologna, one of the most important university towns in Italy, CL runs a student housing racket by alluring students in need of accommodation into their organization. In the past the power of CL was more visible but still today their national meeting held in Rimini every year is scrupulously attended by all politicians who want to have a say.
Free Sid, Paolino, Marcelo, Tia, Inez!


VERONA

Pasquale and Luca were arrested on November 17 in Milan as a nazi skinhead denounced them for an alleged aggression occurred some time ago.
As habitués of football pitches, Italian skinheads show their strength of lions and ‘attack’ the police as if the latter was their enemy. But as soon as they sense a danger, and especially when faced with a street attack against their fascist arrogance, they turn into weeping lambs and call out the same police that it is obviously their ally rather than their enemy. They are bullies when they cowardly assault immigrants, gypsies, homeless and gays, whom they regard as enemies of their idea of Italian identity. They even kill, as they did in Verona on May 1 2008 when they beat a boy to death because he had refused them a cigarette, and they do so because they have friends protecting them. They go to students’ demos in order to take their belts off and strike the comrades while surrounded by caring servants in uniform who always cover and protect them. They never miss the opportunity to denounce to the authorities any action against them, be it true or of their own invention. They are very punctual, these lions on Sundays and lambs on week days, to defame and denounce. Just to make some examples: a comrade from Verona ended up in prison in October 2005 as a well-known nazi accused him of aggression whereas it was the nazi along with four other nazi pigs who had assaulted the comrade; in June 2009 the fascists of Casa Pound in Bologna called for the authorities to charge with murder the responsible of an incendiary attack against the entrance of their front door. Now the nazi scum have sent two comrades from Verona to jail.
Free Pasquale and Luca!