Four fires along the coast north of Bari. Just as many locals from the nightlife set on fire. Not total damage, however: in no case were the structures completely destroyed. But the furnishings melted under the fire and the systems, at least in one case, were incinerated.
«The situation is very serious and is getting worse – thunders Renato De Scisciolo, president ofRegional anti-racket -. I think i clan want to take control of the bouncer in the premises”, a security service that works and makes profits thanks also to crime. For investigators, the fires that occurred over the last twenty-four days from Bisceglie to Giovinazzo passing through Molfetta, at first glance, have all the characteristics of an intimidating message.
Intimidation
A message for which eyes are wide open and antennas raised. There is no motive, for now, no basic extortion request, nor are there any known reasons for resentment towards the owners and managers of the four targeted premises.
The first episode occurred in Giovinazzo on 2 April, when a fire – of which there seems to be no doubt as to its arson origin – was set off to the detriment of the Fronte del Porto restaurant and cocktail bar, which had recently reopened for the start of the beautiful season. A restaurant in the sea which is located on the Riviera di Ponente, in front of the small port of the town north of Bari and which has recently changed management. The flames broke out thirty minutes after midnight, taking over the structure, irreparably damaging the wooden walls and false ceilings, as well as the furnishings, electrical panels, systems and equipment. In fact, the air soon became saturated and the strong heat did the rest. Also on 2 April and again in Giovinazzo it was the turn of Satori Mystical Sensations Land, a beach bar and events located in the Trincea area, along the Riviera di Ponente: in this case, however, the flames, around 9pm, broke out from a BMW Z3 parked inside the structure and registered to one of the owners of the place. And so, in a few minutes, the fire took over part of the external area, destroying the wooden furniture set aside on the ground and, finally, blackening some trees and part of the perimeter wall of the structure: the fire, according to the investigators who also in this case hypothesized a malicious act, it started from the car and then spread elsewhere.
On the night between 9 and 10 April, however, the well-known Tuka Beach lido and restaurant, in via Siciliani in Bisceglie, was the scene of an attempt to damage the structure through arson: the flames, in fact, around the ‘one, they flared up at someone’s behest, but fortunately, the damage reported was limited. «Thanks to our timeliness we managed to avoid the worst – the managers said in a note which appeared on their Facebook page -. It won’t be a cowardly and cowardly gesture that will stop us.” At the moment, also according to the dynamics of the fire, there are no doubts about the malicious origin of the incident, but it is not yet clear whether the attempt had intimidating purposes or whether it was just a prank.
On Friday, however, at 10.30pm another fire hit yet another nightlife venue, the newborn Sacro (it opened its doors on Saturday), on the coast road that leads to Giovinazzo, in the locality of Terza Cala. It is here that someone targeted a property owned by the owner of the Playa del Sol restaurant, but in fact sold and managed by third parties. The dull bang at dinner time of an incendiary bottle thrown near the counter outside, near the garden, attracted the attention of the owner who, with his collaborators, rushed to put out the fire with fire extinguishers . There is no doubt that it was arson.
Motive and perpetrators
The questions, if anything, are those regarding the motive and the author of the intimidating messages by the investigators, coordinated in symbiosis by the Prosecutor’s Office of Bari and Trani. Certain that, although these are facts with very different interpretations and contexts, there may be a common thread connecting, if not all, some of these recent cases, all of which occurred against nightlife venues overlooking the Adriatic.
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