Police here found what appeared to be the grisly remains of a sacrifice outside the Jewish cemetery in Rome, but it was unclear whether it was an anti-Semitic provocation or remnants of a sacrifice outside the Jewish cemetery in Rome, but it was unclear whether it was an anti-Semitic provocation or remnants of a satanic Black Mass ritual.
Shortly before midnight Tuesday, a security guard noticed a box outside the cemetery gates and, fearing it might be a bomb, called the police emergency squad.
There has been a spate of terrorist bombings in Italy over the past several months. The bomb squad, however, found not an explosive device inside the box but rather a small, partially burned wooden table covered in black cloth, to which a heart had been impaled with four nails, a police spokesman said. “It was the heart of an animal, not human,” he said.
The spokesman added that there was nothing specifically anti-Semitic inherent in the grisly discovery, no anti-Semitic slogans or swastikas.
“To me, it seems more like the remains of a Black Mass or something other than an anti-Semitic act,” he said.
But investigators were looking into the possibility that, given the location, it was a provocation by neo-Nazi skinheads.
There have been several recently publicized cases of Black Masses and satanic ceremonies in Italy, including one this past week at a Christian cemetery in Milan.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
