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Mobster arrested after attacking journalist in Italy

Italian police arrested a notorious mobster on Thursday after an unprovoked attack on a journalist in a Rome suburb that stunned the country.

Published: 10 November 2017 08:00 CET
Mobster arrested after attacking journalist in Italy
CasaPound president Simone Di Stefano denied any links to the Spada clan. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

Daniele Piervincenzi, who works for the Rai national television broadcaster, was asking the brother of a jailed mafia boss about his political allegiances when he was set upon while a camera was rolling in the seaside suburb Ostia.

Questioned on his ties to the far-right CasaPound movement, Roberto Spada suddenly lunged and headbutted the reporter, breaking his nose, before pulling out a cosh, hitting him and chasing him down the street.

Spada was arrested on Thursday for assault aggravated by mafia-style violence, with prosecutors saying his behaviour was typical of methods used by organised crime groups to control territory.

He faces up to three years behind bars.

The Spada clan is notoriously violent. Seven members of the family were sentenced to a combined 56 years in jail in October, and Roberto’s brother Carmine was ordered to serve 10 years last year for extortion and mafia association.

“He hit me because I was asking questions, he should ask Ostia for forgiveness,” Piervincenzi said, referring to the bad name the thug had given to the suburb.

The camera team had travelled on Tuesday to the coastal town, about 30 kilometres (19 miles) from Rome’s city centre, for a documentary on municipal elections two years after the local council was dissolved for mafia
infiltration.

‘No lawless areas’

CasaPound denied any links to the Spada clan and denounced the attack as “gratuitous, despicable, unbelievable”.

The party’s vice president, Simone Di Stefano, called on the prosecutor’s office to open an investigation “to clarify for us, for you and for everyone, whether there is any truth in the accusation of collusion between us and a mafia clan”.

Spada apologised for the attack on Facebook, but said the journalist had come to a members-only club and was “frightening my son”, adding that “patience has its limits”.

The images of the assault quickly went viral, sparking an outcry and prompting Italy’s Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni to call Piervincenzi to express his “solidarity after this brutal attack”.

Rome mayor Virginia Raggi said the violence was unacceptable and pledged a crackdown on crime.

“Spada’s arrest is proof that there are no lawless areas in Italy,” the interior ministry said in a statement.

There had been calls from across the political sphere for his arrest. Despite the ferocity of the attack, the wounds inflicted were initially considered not serious enough to lead automatically to handcuffs or a stay in a police cell.

The incident has focused the spotlight on Ostia, where many families on impoverished estates rely on food handouts.

“I’m tired of the name of my neighbourhood, Ostia, being associated with the mafia, because it’s not true, there are lots of honest people who live there,” the party’s municipal councillor Luca Marsella said.

TRAIN

Trial to begin over Paris train attack that inspired movie

A Moroccan man goes on trial in France on Monday accused of an attempted terror attack on an Amsterdam-Paris train five years ago which was foiled by passengers whose heroic actions were turned into a Hollywood film.

Published: 14 November 2020 09:14 CET
Trial to begin over Paris train attack that inspired movie
Off-duty US servicemen Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos (left and right) and their friend Anthony Sadler (centre), who helped tackle the attacker. Photo: Thomas Samson/AFP
Director Clint Eastwood, 90, is on the witness list for the trial in Paris, and it is believed his 2018 film “The 15:17 to Paris” will serve as a reconstruction of the events of August 21, 2015.
   
Ayoub El Khazzani was tackled by passengers, including two off-duty American servicemen, shortly after emerging bare-chested and heavily armed from a toilet on a Thalys high-speed train.
   
Some 150 passengers were in the carriage with him.
   
Khazzani had an AK47 slung over his back, a bag of nearly 300 rounds of ammunition, and appeared to be “in a trance”, according to a young Frenchman waiting in the passageway, and the first to try to subdue Khazzani.
   
Another passenger, a Franco-American professor, came to the Frenchman's aid, grabbing Khazzani's assault rifle.
   
The attacker took a pistol out of his belt, shot and wounded the professor and reclaimed the AK47, only to be tackled afresh and disarmed by two American soldiers — Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos — who heard the commotion from a neighbouring carriage.
   
The soldiers were aided by their friend Anthony Sadler, with whom they were backpacking through Europe.
 
   
Stone was slashed in the neck and on the eyebrow and almost had his thumb sliced off with a box-cutter wielded by Khazzani.
   
“He had 270 rounds of ammunition on him, enough to kill 300 people,” according to Thibault de Montbrial, the lawyer for the three Americans hoping to attend the trial at a special anti-terror court from Monday.
   
According to the lawyer, there was no doubt his clients had prevented a “mass attack.”
   
Khazzani, who joined the Islamic State group in Syria in May 2015, is charged with “attempted terrorist murder”, and will be joined in the dock by three other men accused of helping him.
   
De Montbrial said the Americans, who played themselves in Eastwood's film, wish to attend the trial because they “want to tell” their story and “look into the eyes of the man they faced”.
   
However, they may not make it to Paris due to coronavirus restrictions.
 
 
'Remain calm'
 
The Thalys assault happened in the same year as the January 2015 massacre of staff at the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine, the killing of a policewoman, and the deadly hostage siege at the Hyper Cacher market — which left a total of 17 dead.
   
In November the same year, jihadists armed with assault rifles and explosives struck outside the national stadium, Paris cafes and the Bataclan concert hall, killing 130 people and wounding more than 350 in the deadliest peacetime attack in France's history.
   
Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud is believed to have been one of the masterminds behind the Thalys and November 13 attacks, as well as others in Europe, including the Brussels bombings of March 2016 that killed 32 civilians.
   
Abaaoud was killed by police in a Paris suburb five days after he shot indiscriminately at packed cafe terraces in Paris on the night of the coordinated November 13 attacks.
   
The Khazzani trial comes at a time of heightened security alert in France following three attacks blamed on jihadists in a month — a knife attack outside Charlie Hebdo's former offices, the beheading of a history teacher, and a deadly stabbing spree at a church in Nice.
   
“We must remain calm and rigorous regardless of recent tragedies,” said Lea Dordilly, a lawyer for co-accused Bilal Chatra, who was 19 at the time of the thwarted train attack.
   
He was allegedly recruited in Turkey by Abaaoud, and is suspected of being an advance scout for Khazzani in getting into Europe via the migrant trail from Syria.
   
Khazzani does not deny having boarded the train with the intent of committing an attack, but claims to have had a change of heart at the last minute, too late to avoid the confrontation with the Americans.
   
His lawyer Sarah Mauger-Poliak claims Khazzani is a changed man who has rejected radical Islamist doctrine and regrets his actions.
   
The trial is scheduled to last until December 17.
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