The Italian Jewish community is seriously concerned over on anonymous phone call that was purportedly made to an Italian news agency by a PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) spokesman. He claimed that the bomb blest which caused a massacre in the Bologna railroad station last week was due to an “accident” since the bombs real destination was a “Zionist school.”
“The phone call was made by a man who spoke in “a foreign accent,” according to Italian press reports, stating that he was a PFLP spokesman, the terrorist organization headed by George Habash which also claimed ownership of the two ground-to-air missiles confiscated in Italy over a year ago.
“We wish to offer our apologies to the Italian people,” the alleged Palestinian terrorist organization spokesman said, “for what happened at the station of Bologna. The explosion was an error on the part of our transport agent. The bomb was meant for a Zionist school.”
Palestine Liberation Organization representatives in Rome, questioned by reporters for the Italian press, flatly denied the authenticity of the phone call, denying the possibility that any Palestinian organization was involved in the Bologna attack. “This is a sinister plot by Israeli-Zionist circles and their fascist friends,” said the PLO spokesman regarding the phone call. Bologna, he said, has always been one of the staunchest supporters of the Palestinian cause and was named a twin city of a Palestinian refugee camp.
SUSPECT HELD BY FRENCH POLICE
The Italian government has steadfastly pursued the movement of known neo-fascist, neo-Nazi circles in an attempt to speedily arrest those responsible for the Bologna massacre. A neo-Nazi
But whether or not the PFLP was really involved in the Bologna tragedy, the fact remains that after the terrorist bombing in Antwerp, Belgium on July 27 in which a 15-year-old Jewish boy was killed and 20 other Jews were injured, the anonymous phone call takes on the sinister possibility that the caller was telling the truth. It may have been meant only to frighten Italian Jewry, and if this was its purpose, it unfortunately succeeded.
Italian police have not taken the phone call seriously since it is generally believed that Bologna massacre was the work of the same neo-Nazi elements already identified as responsible for several said Blasts in the past as well as the 1969 bomb blast massacre in a Milan bank. Nevertheless, this phone call is certain to have a devastating effect on the Italian Jewish community.
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.
