" Not enough has been done on the attack on the Rome Synagogue in 1982". This is the accusation, 40 years after one of the most serious terrorist actions ever occurred in the Italian capital, of the president of the Roman Jewish community, Ruth Dureghello, for which that Palestinian attack, which cost the life of a two-year-old child, Stefano Gaj Taché , "was against Israel's right to exist".
It is also echoed by the Chief Rabbi of the Capital, Riccardo Di Segni, for whom the attack "came at the height of a campaign of defamation and hostility that had already begun for months and for which the Jewish community felt betrayed by the institutions because there was no compassion: that wound has not healed yet, because the truth is still missing ".
NEW INVESTIGATIONS - A truth that for months, not without difficulty, has also been looking for the Public Prosecutor of Rome which in 2020 has opened a new investigation file , currently against unknown persons, in which the crime of massacre is hypothesized. An initiative also linked to the release from seizure of some acts of the old investigation. The reserve on the preliminary investigation is maximum but new impetus for investigations has come from a substantial dossier made available to investigators by the Jewish Community, which has become a civil party.
The objective of the investigator is to ascertain whether the action in the Ghetto was carried out by the same hand that killed six people two months earlier, in August 1982, at the Jewish restaurant Jo Goldenberg in Paris. The point of contact between the two events would be the Palestinian Abu Zayed , at the center of a meeting between investigators from the two countries which took place before the summer in Rome. Seven years ago the transalpine authorities issued an international arrest warrant for the three alleged attackers and in 2020 France obtained the extradition of Zayed from Norway, who still lived in Europe. According to a repentant, whose statements are now being examined by the Capitoline magistrates, Zayed was in Rome in the summer of '82. But there is more: on the basis of a comparative analysis also on the two terrorist actions, many similarities emerge and this suggests that the firing group is the same and the weapons used are the same. In both attacks, as confirmed by ballistic analyzes, grenades were first thrown, and then shots were fired with automatic weapons.
"THE SILENCE THAT SCREAMS" - On what happened the brother of Stefano Taché, Gaidel , wrote a book , "The silence that screams", in which he also reconstructs the judicial process . "For years this tragedy has only affected the Jews, as if they were not Italian citizens ". And speaking of the investigation opened in piazzale Clodio, Taché added that he had not been heard by the investigators." At the moment we don't know how things went, we have too many unanswered questions but I trust that yes come to the truth ".
DEATH BLITZ - It was October 9, 1982 : a day of celebration, the day of Shabbat , which in a few moments turned into a tragedy. At 11.55, hell broke out against the faithful who were leaving the Tempio Maggiore with the launch of hand grenades and bursts of machine guns at a man's height. A death blitz that left 37 injured people on the ground and snatched the life of a two-year-old child.
The attack was attributed to the Revolutionary Council of Al Fatah led by Abu Nidal, already the author in those terrible months of numerous attacks against Jewish targets in Italy and in Europe. Principals and executors have never been identified with certainty. The only convict, in absentia, was the Jordanian citizen Osama Abdel Al Zomar , who was sentenced to life imprisonment. The sentence was never carried out as Italy did not obtain his extradition.
(Unioneonline / vl)