Jean-Louis Bruguière was the leading French investigating magistrate in charge of counter-terrorism affairs. He was appointed in 2004 vice-president of the Paris Court of Serious Claims. He has garnered controversy for various acts, including the indictment of Rwandan president Paul Kagame for the assassination in 1994 of Juvenal Habyarimana. Washington Post journalist Dana Priest has cited him as saying that he had in the past ordered the arrest of more than 500 suspects, some with the assistance of US authorities. According to the investigative reporter, who described the workings of Alliance Base, a CTIC joint counter-terrorist operations center, involving the DGSE, the CIA and other foreign intelligence agencies, Bruguière declared that "[he had] good connections with the CIA and FBI." Bruguière has since temporarily left his judicial functions to dedicate himself to politics, joining Nicolas Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) conservative party. However, he was appointed by the European Union at the US Department of Treasury to oversee the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program.
Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare was the military intelligence agency of Italy from 1977–2007.
Nicola Calipari was an Italian major general and SISMI military intelligence officer. Calipari was killed by American soldiers while escorting a recently released Italian hostage, journalist Giuliana Sgrena, to Baghdad International Airport.
The Piazza Fontana bombing was a terrorist attack that occurred on 12 December 1969 when a bomb exploded at the headquarters of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana in Milan, Italy, killing 17 people and wounding 88. The same afternoon, three more bombs were detonated in Rome and Milan, and another was found unexploded. The attack was carried out by the far-right, neo-fascist paramilitary terrorist group Ordine Nuovo and, possibly, certain undetermined collaborators.
Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, is an Egyptian cleric. In 2003, he was living in Milan, Italy, from where he was kidnapped and tortured in Egypt. This "Imam rapito affair" prompted a series of investigations in Italy, culminating in the criminal convictions of 22 CIA operatives, a U.S. Air Force colonel, and two Italian accomplices, as well as Nasr, himself.
Giuseppe "Pino" Pinelli was an Italian railroad worker and anarchist, who died while being detained by Italian police in 1969. Pinelli was a member of the Milan-based anarchist association named Ponte della Ghisolfa. He was also the secretary of the Italian branch of the Anarchist Black Cross. His death, believed by many to have been caused by members of the police, inspired Nobel Prize laureate Dario Fo to write his famous play titled Accidental Death of an Anarchist.
Yves Guérin-Sérac, real name Yves Guillou is a French anti-Communist Roman Catholic activist, former officer of the French army and veteran of the First Indochina War (1945–54), the Korean War (1950–53) and the Algerian War of Independence (1955–62). He was also a member of the elite troop of the 11ème Demi-Brigade Parachutiste du Choc, which worked with the SDECE, and a founding member of the Organisation armée secrète (OAS), a French terrorist group based in Spain which fought against Algerian independence in 1961-62. It was alleged that he was an instigator of the so-called strategy of tension in Italy, and the main organizer of the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing.
Marco Mancini was the second-highest-ranking officer of SISMI, the military intelligence agency of Italy until his 5 July 2006 arrest for his participation in the kidnapping of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr. He was then indicted a second time on December 13, 2006, for his role in the SISMI-Telecom scandal. On February 12, 2013, he was sentenced to a 9-year jail term by the Milano Court of Appeals.
Pietro Valpreda was an Italian anarchist, poet, dancer and novelist.
Mario Scaramella is a lawyer, security consultant and academic nuclear expert. He came to international prominence in 2006 in connection with the poisoning of the ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko. As responsible for intelligence analysis and production on KGB and military GRU espionage in Europe, he served as an investigator and adviser to the Mitrokhin Commission. Scaramella was a suspect by the Italian justice department for calumny.
Nicolò Pollari is a general of the Italian Guardia di Finanza, who was the former head of Italy's national military intelligence agency, or SISMI, from 1 October 2001 until his resignation on 20 November 2006.
Jeffrey W. Castelli is a CIA officer who served as CIA station chief in Rome at the time of the Niger uranium forgeries. His subsequent involvement in the CIA-led kidnapping of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr would lead to his subsequent sentencing to seven years in prison, by an Italian court, in 2013.
The SISMI-Telecom scandal, uncovered in Italy in 2006, refers to a surveillance scandal believed to have begun in 1996, under which more than 5,000 persons' phones were tapped.
The Abu Omar Case was the abduction and transfer to Egypt of the Imam of Milan Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. The case was picked by the international media as one of the better-documented cases of extraordinary rendition carried out in a joint operation by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Italian Military Intelligence and Security Service (SISMI) in the context of the "global war on terrorism" declared by the Bush administration.
The Mitrokhin Commission was an Italian parliamentary commission set up in 2002 to investigate alleged KGB ties of some Italian politicians.
The Years of Lead is a term used for a period of social and political turmoil in Italy that lasted from the late 1960s until the late 1980s, marked by a wave of both far-left and far-right incidents of political terrorism.
On 13 May 1981, in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, Pope John Paul II was shot and wounded by Mehmet Ali Ağca while he was entering the square. The Pope was struck four times and suffered severe blood loss. Ağca was apprehended immediately and later sentenced to life in prison by an Italian court. The Pope later forgave Ağca for the assassination attempt. He was pardoned by Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi at the Pope's request and was deported to Turkey in June 2000.
Guido Giannettini was an Italian secret agent.
Italian intelligence agencies are the intelligence agencies of Italy. Currently, the Italian intelligence agencies are the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna (AISE), focusing on foreign intelligence, and the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna (AISI), focusing on internal security. They form part of the Department of Information for Security, which in turn is part of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. The agencies have been reorganized multiple times since the birth of the Italian Republic in 1946 to attempt to increase effectiveness.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been involved in Italian politics since the end of World War II. The CIA swung the 1948 general election in favor of the right-wing Christian Democrats and would continue to intervene in Italian politics until at least the early 1960s.
