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August 04, 2019 "Forty-five years ago, twelve helpless people lost their lives due to a high-powered device, placed by bloodthirsty terrorists and exploded on the Italicus train, at the exit of the great Apennine tunnel, near the San Benedetto Val station of Sambro ".This was declared by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, on the anniversary of the Italicus massacre, which took place on the night between 3 and 4 August 1974.
"Many were wounded. The railway worker Silver Sirotti managed to save several travelers imprisoned by the flames, but he paid with death that heroic gesture of altruism and human solidarity, an expression of authentic sense of duty - continues the head of state -. anniversary I wish to express my closeness to family members and to those who have been marked by wounds and pain. The judicial proceedings could not lead to definitive sentences of condemnation and the failure to ascertain such serious facts calls on the consciences of each one ". For Mattarella "it is an injury to the principle of justice solemnly affirmed by our Constitution, to which a democratic community can never resign. By striking innocent citizens, the bomb wanted to hit the Republic and the civil coexistence of the Italians".
"The investigations and trials, while not reaching the identification of the terrorist executors, have confirmed the link with other attacks and with the destabilizing strategy hatched in those years", continues Sergio Mattarella. "The neo-fascist matrix is made explicit in the sentence of the Cassation and then in the same conclusions of the parliamentary commission of inquiry on the P2 lodge - underlines the president of the Republic -. The firm response of the Italian people defeated then the dark and criminal plots, defending the democratic order: the solidarity of the country gathered around the crucial and indivisible assets of freedom and respect for people's lives remains the resource against the emergence of any threat or any form of violence ", he concludes.