Monument to the victims of a major terrorist attack in Italy 39 years ago
Only now, 39 years later, are being publicized a series of shocking documents certifying heavy accusations which were denied for many years. The world heard about them only through intimations from the Italian president Francisco Kosiga in an interview to the Israeli press back in 2008. These documents were squirreled away far from the public eye, but were exposed this past Friday in the Italian press.
In an interview granted to Yediot Acharonot fifteen years ago, Kosiga spoke about information which was liable of creating "an earthquake." He claimed that Italy permitted Palestinian terrorists to strike at Jewish-Italian targets within its borders, under an agreement known as "Ludo Moro" (Dark Game).
According to these agreements, in exchange for the Italian authorities looking the other way, the Palestinians promised not to attack Italian targets in Italy or outside it, so long as the Italians would not maintain any contact with Israel or the Jewish State. Prime Minister Kosiga, who also served as president and Minister of Interior at the time declared in surprise that Italy gave official permission to kill Jews found to be in contact with Israel. "We sold you down the river," he said, but the earth did not quake. One thing was preserved religiously: Esav despises Yaakov.
Italy disregarded the accusations which Kosiga aired in 2008, as did the other nations of the world. Officially, these documents did not exist, and the Ludo Moro agreement was considered a wild figment of someone's imagination. Italian officials dismissed Kosiga as being demented and senile, attempting to take revenge upon past peers.
It is now clarified that he was not senile or revengeful. The documents exposed in the Italian press certify that his conscience was justified. The attack which he spoke about did actually take place in a shul in Rome on Shabbos Simchas Torah of 5743, in which Stephano Guy Taka, a two-year-old, was murdered, along with 17 other Jews who were injured in various levels of severity.
Information about this attack caused red lights to blink in the offices of Italian security, hinting at the possibility of other terrorist attacks on shuls, but these were snuffed out through orders from above as part of the Ludo Moro agreement.
Does it come as a surprise that the investigation which took place after the attack came up with no results? Leonardo Piperno, an eye witness, told: "They just asked me several general questions and let me go."
Piperno said that he saw two terrorists arriving at the shul on motor cycles, but to this very day, it is not certain who, exactly, committed the attack.
Results from the investigation in 1982 show that five terrorists carried it out. Four of them were not caught but the fifth, Abdal Osama el Zimar, a Palestinian student in Italy, was arrested at the Turkish-Greek border bearing 15 kilo of explosives. His friend at the university said that he admitted to her that he had planned the attack on the synagogue. Italy sought to have him extradited to stand on trial in 1991 without involving the Ludo Moro secret agreements at the trial.
