Paolo Bellini, former Avanguardia Nazionale terrorist, arrested for the 1980 Bologna massacre

Paolo Bellini is all this, the ‘black primrose’, as they called him, just a few days ago seventy years ago, a former terrorist of the patriotic vanguard, sentenced primarily to life imprisonment in April 2022 by the Criminal Court of Bologna, presided over by Judge Francesco Maria Caruso, as the fifth perpetrator of the August 2, 1980 massacre in competition with the fire of the former (Valerio Fioravanti, Francesca Mambro, Luigi Ciavardini and Gilberto Cavallini, the latter convicted only in the first instance, appeal continues). Since the mid-1970s, Bellini from Reggio has been the star of judicial news. Author of murders like the one in 1975 against Lotta Continua militant Alceste Campanile, who would only confess in 1999 (he would be convicted in 2009 but then acquitted due to the lapsed statute of limitations for the crime).

In 1976 he became a fugitive from justice to escape an arrest warrant for attempted murder: he took refuge in South America, only to reappear in Italy in 1981 under the pseudonym of Roberto da Silva, a Brazilian. In 1983 Bellini was first investigated for the Bologna massacre, but was later acquitted. In 1988 he met his man of honor Antonino Gio in prison, whom he described as an “infiltrator of the state” in the letter he wrote before his death after the attacks of 1993. Penitent Giovanni Brusca describes him as “proposing” a strategy of striking monuments.

In 2019, when the judges of the Public Prosecutor’s Office requested annulment of the acquittal ordered by the Court of Bologna on April 28, 1992, in connection with the station massacre, Bellini works as a pizza maker in Lazio under an assumed name. After exiting the Special Protection Program. Then the indictment and the start of the trial in April 2021: “I feel like Sacco and Vanzetti” was his only comment before entering the courtroom.

His 40-year alibi was broken up by the Attorney General and his ex-wife identified him in an amateur video filmed at the station on the morning of 2 August 1980 immediately after the bomb exploded, which killed 85 people and injured more than 200. On April 6, 2022, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, in the first degree.

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