Forty years ago the Rapido 904 massacre. Mattarella: "The institutions rejected terrorist-mafia blackmail"

“The institutions were able to reject blackmail and defend democracy thanks to the civil reaction and the Italians’ love for freedom. This is the baton to be handed over to the younger generations”. This was said by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, in the declaration on the occasion of “the forty years since the day before Christmas 1984, when a bomb tore through the carriages of the rapid train 904 which was traveling through the great tunnel of the Apennines”.

“It was a frightening massacre, of terrorist-mafia footprintas the judiciary would have ascertained”, underlines Mattarella. “Sixteen victims, almost 300 injured. The lives of defenseless women and men who returned to their homelands for the holidays were destroyed. Also three children among the victims of such inhumanity”. “Once again, the attempt was to attack the peaceful coexistence of the country. The chain of criminal attacks on trains was lengthening, in continuity with the massacres carried out by black subversion. A strategy of intimidation and destabilization that the mafia would have replicated against the Republic even in the following decade”, he still recalls.

“The first, intense thought is aimed at the family members and all those who have since then carried the weight of the most intimate and indelible pain. The solidarity that is renewed today – states the Head of State – finds its roots in the response that the people Italians knew how, united, to express themselves in the face of the subversive attack”.

The Christmas massacre

It was December 23, 1984, when a terrible explosion ended the lives of 16 people and injured 266. It was renamed the Christmas massacremany people from the South had taken that train to reach their relatives in the North to spend the holidays together. The bomb attack occurred on the Rapido 904 train, which left Naples station and headed for Milan.

While traveling through the Great Tunnel of the Apennines, carriage 9 of the convoy, the investigations confirmed, was torn apart by a radio-controlled bomb, placed on a luggage rack and inside two suitcases with pentrite and T4.

The explosion occurred between Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, in the stretch between the stations of Vernio and San Benedetto Val di Sambro, already the scene of the Italicus massacre. For the attack on train 904, the ‘Cosa Nostra’ boss Giuseppe ‘Pippo’ Calò, his accomplices Guido Cercola and Franco Di Agostino and the German bomb disposal expert Friedrich Schaudinn were definitively convicted.

According to the Florence prosecutor’s office, Totò Riina was “instigator, determinant and instigator of the massacre”. During the trial, which took place in 2015, the repentant Leonardo Messina described the attack as “a signal to his political friends, and a signal within the mafia”. According to reconstructions, the massacre was intended to help the Cosa Nostra leaders loosen the grip they were subjected to after the revelations of some justice collaborators which had led to hundreds of restrictive measures.

The trials that have taken place from 1985 to today have confirmed the terrorist-mafia origin of the massacre, revealing the connection between criminal organisations, the far right, freemasonry and deviant services, with many red herrings. But there are still many pieces missing to complete the mosaic. The Florence Public Prosecutor’s Office has reopened the investigation to shed light on any new perpetrators. Documents declassified by the secret services and other judicial materials were acquired, with the aim of identifying further instigators and perpetrators.

Forty years later, however, the Rapido 904 massacre remains an open wound in the history of our country and several points still remain unclear. To remember the massacre and the victims, today there will be several moments of commemoration in some places: at the central station of Naples, in San Benedetto Val di Sambro, Vernio and in the stations where the train stopped on 23 December. At 11am, at the San Benedetto Val di Sambro station (Bologna), a wreath of flowers was placed on the plaque commemorating the victims; at 7.08 pm, the reading of the names of the victims; at 7.30 pm, the placing of sixteen lit candles and sixteen Christmas stars at the war memorial; at 8pm greetings from the representatives of the institutions and reading of the thoughts by the students. At 9pm, church of the Madonna dei Fornelli, concert in honor of the victims. In Vernio (Prato): at 7pm, Vernio monument – Giardino delle Rocce, commemorative moment; at 9pm, in the Sala della Capriate, Fabbrica ex Meucci, testimony and memory of the rescuers and those who experienced the massacre.