Francesca Mambro (born 25 April 1959) is an Italian activist and former terrorist, who was a leading member of the far-right Italian Armed Revolutionary Nuclei (NAR). She was arrested in Rome in March 1982 for complicity in the Bologna bombing of August 1980. Mambro was tried and found guilty of 96 murders, for which she received a total of nine life sentences equating to over 84 years' imprisonment. Mambro was paroled in 2013 and her sentence expired five years later.
Mambro was born on 25 April 1959 in Chieti, the only daughter of four children (her brothers were Mariano, Mario and Italo). Mambro's father was a Marshal of Public Security. Her family moved to Rome when she was young, dwelling near Piazza Bologna. Mambro attended a magistral school. [1]
Mambro became politically active while attending the lyceum, and later joined the Italian Social Movement, [2] first in its youth section and later graduating to the FUAN, where she worked at the organisation's headquarters in Via Siena. Mambro was also a member of Lotta Popolare, at the time headed by Teodoro Buontempo and Paolo Signorelli. [1] The historian Andrea Colombo has suggested that the formative event of Mambro's youth was the Acca Larentia killings of 7 January 1978, [3] which, he says, encouraged many MSI activists to take up armed struggle. [4] She joined the Revolutionary Armed Groups—then led by Valerio Fioravanti—whom she had previously met when they were both children. The two soon began a relationship. Riccardo Bocca describes the couple thus: [5]
"He, already a fugitive, goes to see her in the hospital where she is awaiting an operation, then they start meeting in a garden near the house where she works as a baby sitter. It does not take long because a mutual attraction—already long-standing—coupled with a political affinity that according to Francesca is as much a determinant as the attraction itself, brought them together. And it is equally obvious that the impetuous girl should take the first step". [5]
One of Mambro's first acts with the group was on 7 March 1979—the night before the anniversary of International Women's Day—when she placed a homemade bomb in the Prati district of Rome; Fioravanti, with a number of others, covered her. [6] On 30 March the following year, Mambro, Fioravanti and others attacked and robbed a Paduan army base, in which they stole machine guns, automatic rifles, pistols and ammunition. As they escaped, Mambro shot the letters "BR" onto the barrack's wall in order to confuse any subsequent police investigation. [7] Two months later Mambro was part of the unit which shot and killed a policeman—another was injured—on an attack outside a high school in Rome. [8]
She murdered 26 year old Captain Francesco Straullu, a law enforcement agent investigating the far right in Italy in October 1981, publicly declaring: [9]
We are not interested in seizing power nor in educating the masses. What counts for us is our ethic, to kill Enemies and to annihilate traitors. The will to fight keeps us going from day to day, the thirst for revenge is our food ... We are not afraid to die nor to end our days in jail; our only fear is not to be able to clean up everything and everybody.
On 5 March 1982, during a shootout with police following a robbery of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro in Rome, Mambro was shot in the groin and seriously injured. [1] She was taken to the emergency room at Santo Spirito hospital; she survived her injuries but was arrested there. [10]
The Bologna bombing had taken place on 2 August 1980. Following their arrest in 1982 Mambro and Fioravanti were tried and sentenced to life imprisonment. Mambro continued to claim her innocence of the bombing, suggesting that, on account of the number of other murders she confessed to — for which she would have received a similar sentence — she had no reason to lie. [11] Mambro was charged with a total of 96 murders (including 85 in Bologna), as well as theft, illegal possession of weaponry, housebreaking, kidnapping, subversive association, terrorist activities, and conspiracy. [12]
In 1985 she married Valerio Fioravanti, [13] her partner of the previous decade and with whom she had a daughter in 2001. [14] Mambro, along with Fioravanti, took moral responsibility for the acts of the NAR, but rejected the notion of involvement in the Bologna bombing generally and specifically of executing Alessandro Caravillani. [15] In 2000, Mambro was ordered to pay over € 2,134,273,000 (1970962400 dollars) in compensation. [16] Although she was nominally to pay the Presidency of the Council and the Ministry of the Interior, commentators assumed this would never be paid, as Mambro had insufficient funds. [17] [ failed verification ]
Mambro was paroled in 2013 and her sentence officially expired five years later. [18] In 2015, the Undersecretary for Justice, Cosimo Maria Ferri commented that Mambro had been kept under observation for the duration of her sentence and this had persuaded the government that she had demonstrated a "certain repentance". [19] Along with Fioravanti, since the early nineties, she has collaborated with Hands Off Cain, the association against the death penalty linked to the Radical Party.
Francesco Maurizio Cossiga was an Italian politician. A member of Christian Democracy, he was prime minister of Italy from 1979 to 1980 and the president of Italy from 1985 to 1992. Cossiga is widely considered one of the most prominent and influential politicians of the First Italian Republic.
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, another bomb exploded in a bank in Rome, and another was found unexploded in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The attack was carried out by the far-right, neo-fascist paramilitary terrorist group Ordine Nuovo and possibly certain undetermined collaborators.
The Bologna massacre was a terrorist bombing of the Bologna Centrale railway station in Bologna, Italy, on the morning of 2 August 1980, which killed 85 people and wounded over 200. Several members of the neo-fascist terrorist organization Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari were sentenced for the bombing, although the group denied involvement.
The Italicus Express massacre was a terrorist bombing in Italy on a train of the public rail network. During the early hours of 4 August 1974, the bomb attack killed 12 people and wounded 48. Responsibility was claimed by the neo-fascist terrorist organization Ordine Nero.
Giuseppe "Pippo" Calò is an Italian mobster and member of the Sicilian Mafia in Porta Nuova. He was referred to as the cassiere di Cosa Nostra because he was heavily involved in the financial side of organized crime, primarily money laundering. He was arrested in 1985 and sentenced to 23 years' imprisonment as part of the 1986/87 Maxi Trial. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1989 for organising the 1984 Train 904 bombing and was given several further life sentences between 1995 and 2002. He was also charged with ordering the murder of Roberto Calvi – nicknamed il banchiere di Dio – of the Banco Ambrosiano in 1982, but was acquitted in 2007 due to "insufficient evidence" in a surprise verdict.
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The Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari, abbreviated NAR, was an Italian terrorist neo-fascist militant organization active during the Years of Lead from 1977 to November 1981. It committed over 100 murders in four years, and had planned to assassinate the politicians Francesco Cossiga, Gianfranco Fini and Adolfo Urso. The group maintained close links with the Banda della Magliana, a Rome-based criminal organization, which provided such logistical support as lodging, false papers, weapons, and bombs to the NAR. In November 1981, it was discovered that the NAR hid weapons in the basements of the Health Ministry. The first trial against them sentenced 53 people in May 1985 on charges of terrorist activities.
In Italy, the phrase Years of Lead refers to a period of political violence and social upheaval 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 and violent clashes.
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Mario Amato was an Italian magistrate, assassinated in 1980 by NAR members Gilberto Cavallini and Luigi Ciavardini.
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The Train 904 bombing was a terror attack which occurred on 23 December 1984, in the Apennine Base Tunnel. A bomb on the 904 express train from Naples to Milan was detonated, killing 16 and wounding 266. The bombing location was near the location of the Italicus Express bombing ten years previously.
The Acca Larentia killings, also known in Italy as the Acca Larentia massacre, were a double homicide that occurred in Rome on 7 January 1978. The attack was claimed by the self-described Nuclei Armati per il Contropotere Territoriale. Members of militant far-left groups were charged but acquitted, and the culprits were never identified.
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