Depleted uranium is uranium with a lower content of the fissile isotope 235
U
than natural uranium. Natural uranium contains about 0.72% 235
U
, while the DU used by the U.S. Department of Defense contains 0.3% 235
U
or less. The less radioactive and non-fissile 238
U
constitutes the main component of depleted uranium. Uses of DU take advantage of its very high density of 19.1 grams per cubic centimetre (0.69 lb/cu in), 68.4% denser than lead.
Operation Gladio was the codename for clandestine "stay-behind" operations of armed resistance that were organized by the Western Union (WU), and subsequently by NATO and by the CIA, in collaboration with several European intelligence agencies during the Cold War. Although "Gladio" specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind organizations, "Operation Gladio" is used as an informal name for all of them. Stay-behind operations were prepared in many NATO member countries, and in some neutral countries.
The Piazza Fontana bombing was a terrorist attack that occurred on 12 December 1969 when a bomb exploded at the headquarters of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana in Milan, Italy, killing 17 people and wounding 88. The same afternoon, three more bombs were detonated in Rome and Milan, and another was found unexploded. The attack was carried out by the far-right, neo-fascist paramilitary terrorist group Ordine Nuovo and possibly certain undetermined collaborators.
A strategy of tension is a political policy wherein violent struggle is encouraged rather than suppressed. The purpose is to create a general feeling of insecurity in the population and make people seek security in a strong government.
Vincenzo Vinciguerra is an Italian neo-fascist activist, a former member of the Avanguardia Nazionale and Ordine Nuovo. He is currently serving a life-sentence for the murder of three Carabinieri by a car bomb in Peteano in 1972. The investigation in this previously unsolved affair by prosecutor Felice Casson led to the revelation of "Gladio" networks around Western Europe.
Serge Brammertz is a Belgian prosecutor, academic and jurist. He serves as the chief prosecutor for the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) since 2016. He also served as the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) from 2008 until its closure in 2017.
Yves Guérin-Sérac, born Yves Guillou was a French anti-Communist Roman Catholic activist, former officer of the French army and veteran of the First Indochina War (1945–54), the Korean War (1950–53) and the Algerian War of Independence (1955–62). He was also a member of the elite troop of the 11ème Demi-Brigade Parachutiste de Choc, which worked with the SDECE, and a founding member of the Organisation armée secrète (OAS), a French terrorist group based in Spain which fought against Algerian independence in 1961-62. It was alleged that he was an instigator of the so-called strategy of tension in Italy, and the main organizer of the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing.
The Belgian stay-behind network, colloquially called "Gladio", was a secret mixed civilian and military unit, trained to form a resistance movement in the event of a Soviet invasion and part of a network of similar organizations in North Atlantic Treaty Organization states. It functioned from at least 1951 until 1990, when the Belgian branch was promptly and officially dissolved after its existence became publicly known following revelations concerning the Italian branch of the stay-behind network.
Guido Salvini is an Italian judge, based in Milan. He issued European arrest warrants in 2005 against approximatively 20 CIA agents accused of having taken part in the abduction of Abu Omar, the Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003. The case is known in Italy as the Imam Rapito affair. Before that, Guido Salvini was in charge of investigations, since July 1988, concerning Italy's strategy of tension during the 1970s.
Projekt-26, best known as P-26, was a stay-behind army in Switzerland charged with countering a possible invasion of the country. The existence of P-26 as secret intelligence agencies dissimulated in the military intelligence agency (UNA) was revealed in November 1990 by the PUK EMD Parliamentary Commission headed by senator Carlo Schmid. The commission, whose initial aim was to investigate the alleged presence of secret files on citizens constituted in the Swiss Ministry of Defence, was created in March 1990 in the wake of the Fichenaffäre or Secret Files Scandal, during which it had been discovered that the federal police, BUPO, had maintained files on 900,000 persons.
In Italy, the phrase Years of Lead refers to a period of social turmoil, political violence and upheaval that lasted from the late 1960s until the late 1980s, marked by a wave of both far-left and far-right incidents of political terrorism and violent clashes.
Italian intelligence agencies are the intelligence agencies of Italy. Currently, the Italian intelligence agencies are the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna (AISE), focusing on foreign intelligence, and the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna (AISI), focusing on internal security. They form part of the Department of Information for Security, which in turn is part of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. The agencies have been reorganized multiple times since the birth of the Italian Republic in 1946 to attempt to increase effectiveness.
Giuseppe Valerio Fioravanti is an Italian former terrorist and actor, who with Francesca Mambro, was a leading figure in a far-right terrorist group, Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari. Fioravanti appeared in films and television from a young age, and in his early teens was the most famous child in Italy. He and Mambro were fugitives wanted for terrorist offences by their early twenties, they spent a further period on the run as suspects in the Bologna bombing. Both were captured after gunfights with police, and later found guilty of responsibility for the Bologna train bombing; they were sentenced to ten life terms, plus 250 years. Fioravanti was released from prison in 2009.
Carlo Cicuttini was an Italian-born, naturalized Spaniard neofascist terrorist.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been involved in Italian politics since the end of World War II. The CIA helped swing the 1948 general election in favor of the centrist Christian Democrats and would continue to intervene in Italian politics until at least the early 1960s.
The Direzione Investigativa Antimafia, also known as DIA, is an Italian multi-force investigation body under the Department of Public Security of the Ministry of the Interior. Its main task is the fight against the mafia-related organized crime in Italy.
The Ordine Nero was an Italian terrorist fascist group founded in 1974 following the dissolution of the fascist Ordine Nuovo. Between 1974 and 1978, bombings by ON led to a number of woundings and deaths, having orchestrated several deadly bombings and murders including the 1974 Italicus Express Bombing and the 1974 Brescia Bombing.
Caterina Chinnici is an Italian magistrate and politician who has been serving as a Member of the European Parliament since 2014.
Francesco Saverio Pavone was the Italian magistrate, chief of the Procura di Venezia for several years.
Carlo Nordio is an Italian politician, former magistrate and prosecutor, who is serving as Italian Minister of Justice since 22 October 2022, in Giorgia Meloni's government. In the 2022 Italian presidential election he was the candidate of Brothers of Italy for President of Italy. In the 2022 Italian general election he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies.
