Italian Police raid ultra-right extremists, confiscate air-to-air missile from Qatar
The Italian press reported on 16 July that during a raid against ultra-right extremists, Italian Police confiscated weapons in several cities in the north of the country, including the most recent models of automatic assault rifles and an air-to-air missile. Three men were arrested during the operation.
The raid was a consequence of investigations focused on Italian citizens who had fought in Donbas in eastern Ukraine. The air-to-air missile, of French production, came from Qatari Army equipment.
One of those arrested, a former customs inspector named Fabio Del Bergiolo, had attempted to sell the air-to-air missile for EUR 470 000. Interest in buying it was expressed by a bureaucrat from an unnamed country who asked to see the weapon’s documentation, according to Italian daily La Repubblica.
Del Bergiolo once ran for the Italian Senate in 2001 for the ultra-right Forza Nuova (New Force) party. The raid that led to his arrest was based on Kyiv having given the Italian authorities last year a list of 25 Italian citizens who have been fighting since 2014 in the ranks of pro-Russian separatists.
The list was compiled by the Ukrainian secret service. The Italian authorities then began to investigate the matter.
Other Italian citizens have also joined the Ukrainian Army to fight on that side of the conflict. In both cases, the Italian citizens fighting in Ukraine, especially those on the pro-Russian side, have committed several crimes under Italian law, reports the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
The paper lists some of the crimes as follows: enemy acts against a foreign state, enlisting for the purpose of committing terrorism, illegal enlisting for war, or training for the purpose of committing terrorism. The Italian citizens on both sides of the conflict in Ukraine frequently come from the same parts of Italy and are usually ultra-nationalists and ultra-right extremists, Corriere della Sera reports.
