THE YEARS OF LEAD.(terrorism in Italy)(Brief Article)

Europe, October, 2001 by d'Aquino, Niccolo

"The years of lead" was a term derived from a film by the German director Margarethe von Trotta, but in Italy, it denoted a two-decade period that was marked by a bloody series of murders and terrorist attacks that claimed many innocent victims. Two thousand people were injured and more than four hundred were killed in terrorist action between December 12, 1969--when a bomb devastated a bank in Milan and another exploded at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Rome--and 1986 when Italian senator Paolo Ruffilli, a member of the majority Christian Democratic Party, was murdered. This last assassination seemed to be the final desperate action against a political target by a crumbling terrorist organization. But two years ago, Massimo D'Antona, an adviser to Italy's labor...

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