Specialist police are investigating after an arson attack targeting an academic and a police officer was linked to the death of two anarchists, killed by an improvised bomb they were apparently attempting to build last month.
Counter terrorism police are considering the potential of trans-Ionian links between hard-left militant groups after anarchists claimed responsibility for a recent attack and said it was in honour of two Italian anarchists who died in March.
Gas bottles were turned into an improvised weapon left at the door of an Athens apartment block on March 25th, it was reported at the time, with police then considering residents of the building including the dean of the National Technical University of Athens and a member of Greece’s special riot police as potential intended targets. Damage to the building was minor and there were no injuries.
But now, reports Italian newspaper Il Tempo, the fact that attack came only days after the deaths of anarchist extremists Alessandro Mercogliano, 53-years-old, and his 35-year-old girlfriend Sara Ardizzone is now thought to be of importance. The paper states a statement published on a known Anarchist website said the arson was intended to “christen” a new anarchist cell formed in memory of the dead activists “Sara and Sandro”.
The statement is reported to have accused the university dean of being as “spymaster” for the institutions of authority, and those claiming responsibility said: “We dedicate our action to the Italian anarchist comrades Alessandro Mercogliano and Sara Ardizzone, who lost their lives following the accidental explosion of a homemade explosive device… To honour their memory, we have named the group that carried out the attack after them.”
As earlier reported, ‘Sara and Sandro’ were discovered by dog walkers in the remains of a collapsed farmhouse in a Rome suburb last month. Police initially believed the pair had been unlucky members of the homeless community who had inadvertently chosen to sleep in an unstable building that fell on top of them. However the fact the male had apparently lost his arm in an explosion at the time of death raised suspicions, and the presence of distinctive tattoos on both made identification possible.
In March, police said they believed the pair were cooking a bomb which prematurely exploded. Both had been involved with police several times over their extremist campaigning, and ‘Sandro’ Mercogliano had been jailed for five years for targeting politicians, journalists, and police officers with explosives.
Anarchist activism, once a major feature of the European security scene, fell into relative obscurity after the end of the Cold War, but has returned to prominence recently. Hard-left cells have repeatedly attacked the infrastructure underpinning Western cities, including major capitals including Paris and Berlin.
Read the full article here