Massacre of Bologna, definitive sentence to life imprisonment for the former national avant -garde Paolo Bellini

The sentence of life imprisonment for Paolo Bellini, 72 years old, a former national avant -garde exponent, accused of competition in the Bologna massacre is definitive took place on August 2, 1980 and which caused the death of 85 people.

This was decided by the judges of the sixth section of the Cassation who also reiterated the six -year sentence for the former carabinieri captain Piergiorgio Segatel for sidetracking and four years for Domenico Catracchia, administrator of some condominiums in via Gradoli in Rome, For false information to the public prosecutor.

Yesterday the Court, after a long discussion of the accusation, the defenses and the civil parties ended over 8 pm, had postponed the decision to the second instance sentence of the Bolognese judges to date, who had recognized the role of the 72 -year -old, a former national avant -garde terrorist, In carrying (at least in part) the explosive, or in giving material and logistical support to the fire group that carried out the massacre of August 2 at the station.

Trial by decades of his runs (I Nar Giusva Fioravanti, Francesca Mambro and Luigi Ciavardini), but only a few years from the other Nar Gilberto Cavallini, Bellini has always declared himself innocent. Against him the Public Prosecutor of Bologna, Which had invoked an investigation that the ordinary prosecutor considered closed, collected a series of clues difficult to disassemble. First of all the recognition of his ex -wife on the frame of the amateur film shot in the station a few minutes after the explosion. You can see a man with a mustache who for anthropometry experts is him. A film jumped out 40 years later by the dusty archives of the prosecutor’s file, kept in the State Archive, to which no one had given weight for decades, found instead by the civil lawyers. But that frame would not have served very much if the ex -wife, first intercepted by speaking with her children and then also under the oath, had not said that she recognized the man who had been beside her for half a life, even from fugitive, from which he had two children and for whom he had lied.

False Alibi was the other card in the hands of the accusation: although the 72 -year -old always claimed to have started very early that morning from Reggio Emilia to take the family in Rimini at a time between 9.30 and 10, headed on vacation at Passo del Tonale, his wife and brother -in -law also denied this. Bellini would have arrived in Rimini late on lunchtime And therefore at 10.25, when the bomb exploded, he could be in Bologna. But with him there was the 8 -year -old granddaughter who, supported the appeal judges, went behind it to constitute a false alibi.
Against him, then, there was the reconstruction of the scenario that led to the tragic attack: no longer an act of spontaneism, but a drawing of subversion of the democratic state hatched and financed by Licio Gelli, Umberto Ortolani and Mario Tedeschi, top of the Masonic loggia P2 all deceased co -defendants, That to bring it to score they would have financed several terrorist groups: the Nar precisely, but also new and National Avant -garde order, of which Bellini was militant.

The PG had also asked for confirmation of the six -year sentence for the former carabinieri captain Piergiorgio Segatel for sidetracking, because he would have hidden the preventive information he had received on the massacre, and four years for Domenico Catracchia, Administrator of some condominiums in via Gradoli in Rome For false information to the public prosecutor. For Bellini, again in prison since 2023 in high security regime, the defenders Manfredi Fiormonti and Antonio Capitella had once again asked for the acquittal: «It was not in Bologna, with the massacre it has nothing to do with it. This was a political process ».

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