ITALY,AFGHANISTAN: Lethal Blunders

ITALY

Neo-Fascists miss their mark

Maurizio Di Leo, 34, a printing compositor at the Rome daily // Messaggero, had just parked his car near his home when the two gunmen struck. They pumped six bullets into him and sped away on a motor scooter. Di Leo died instantly. Within an hour, the neo-Fascist Armed Revolutionary Nuclei (NAR) claimed responsibility for the killing —and even phoned // Messaggero to brag about it. "This evening our commando executed Concina..." the caller began. "No, you son of a bitch," shouted the switchboard operator in tears. "You didn't kill Concina. You murdered someone else." While Maurizio Di Leo lay dead in the street last week, // Messaggero Reporter Michele Concina, author of several exposes on the NAR and the real target of the attack, was working quietly in his office.

Italy's neo-Fascists had once again drawn blood—however mistakenly—a month to the day after a terrorist bomb detonated in the Bologna train station and took 84 lives. Indeed, on the morning of Di Leo's death, tens of thousands of demonstrators had gathered outside the gutted station to protest the massacre. Police were holding 21 suspects in connection with the bombing, claiming to have decapitated the country's neo-Fascist movement.

In fact, they may have barely scratched the surface. Italy's degenerating political climate has not only been chilled by violence from the left, it has also spawned what one official calls "a vast archipelago of black [right-wing] terrorism." Of the 248 people killed by terrorists in Italy since 1969, neo-Fascists have been responsible for 117.

Groups such as Ordine Nuovo (New Order) and Ordine Nero (Black Order) exist largely underground and range in size from a handful to several hundred members. Their activities include both the open violence of the NAR, the dominant force in the ultra-right movement, and the more traditional politicking of Terza Po-sizione (Third Position), a legal, strongly nationalist organization that operates just this side of Italy's antiFascism laws.

An enduring strain of ineptitude runs through Italy's terrorism-on-the-right. Last December four NAR hit men were arrested after shooting down a young university student they mistakenly took to be Giorgio Arcangeli, an anti-Fascist lawyer. Thus the Di Leo blunder did not really surprise anyone. A "tactical error," the NAR called it in a rambling note late last week that said it would still go after Reporter Concina for "contributing to the falsehoods about the revolutionary vanguard." Warned the terrorists: "We will return. This time there will be no mistake." -

AFGHANISTAN

No Place for Tourists

A land where Soviets are hated—and hunted