Fabrizio Zani

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Fabrizio Zani (Milan, 9 June 1953) is an Italian former terrorist.

Index

1 Biography

2 Works

3 Notes

4 Bibliography

Biography

A leading exponent of the Italian extreme right in the 1970s and 1980s, he was among the founders in 1974 of Ordine nero, a neo-fascist terrorist secret association. In addition, he was active in the 1980s in formations straddling political and armed struggle, such as Terza Posizione and Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR).

He was arrested for the first time in the autumn of 1974 for several attacks carried out for Ordine Nero, including an extremely serious one (classified as a "non-consummated massacre") against the Chiari e Forti company, where at 3 a.m. on 10 May 1974 he placed a high-powered device with a clockwork trigger inside the condominium staircase of the building in Via Arnaud 27 in Bologna, the company's headquarters, risking the collapse of the building that also housed 12 families.[1][2] He served about four years in maximum security prisons. Once released from prison, he continued the armed struggle with the NAR.

In 1978, together with other exponents of the Italian subversive right, such as Mario Tuti, Maurizio Murelli and Angelo Izzo (already convicted for the Circeo events), he founded a clandestine political periodical, Quex, which became the voice of right-wing political prisoners and pushed for the detachment of the new generations of militants from the old neo-fascist organisations, which Quex accused of colluding with the secret services and implicated in the strategy of tension.

He was arrested again in April 1983 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Zani, together with Pasquale Belsito and Stefano Procopio, made himself responsible for the murder of Mauro Mennucci.[3] Mennucci was a former Pisan ordinovist, who helped Mario Tuti during his absconding in 1975, but once arrested he was forced to confess to the anti-terrorist squad his hiding place.[4] For this reason he acquired the reputation of a traitor and on 8 July 1982 he was the victim of a real ambush. Participating in the ambush was a commando of the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (Revolutionary Armed Nuclei) composed of Pasquale Belsito, Fabrizio Zani and Stefano Procopio. Belsito would face a long and adventurous fugitive state, only to end up in handcuffs in Spain in 2001, while Procopio would be captured in Paris in September 1982 at the end of a gun battle with French police forces.

He was also convicted of conspiracy to murder in the death of Alessandro Caravillani, a Roman student who was accidentally involved in a gunfight between NAR and police during a bank robbery. On 5 March 1982, a NAR commando was carrying out a robbery at the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro in Piazza Irnerio, Rome. Terrorists Roberto Nistri, Walter Sordi, Fabrizio Zani, Ciro Lai and Livio Lai are inside the building while covering the action from outside are Giorgio Vale, Francesca Mambro and Stefano Procopio. During a gunfight with the police, Francesca Mambro is wounded; her accomplices leave her at the Santo Spirito Hospital. Alessandro Caravillani, a 17-year-old passer-by, dies during the shooting. The 29 July 1986 sentence of the Rome Assize Court stated that the lethal shot came from Livio Lai's assault rifle. Although he was the material perpetrator of the murder, thanks to dissociation he will receive a 22-year prison sentence, while Fabrizio Zani, Roberto Nistri and Francesca Mambro will be sentenced to life imprisonment.

Zani was also convicted for other controversial actions and numerous bank robberies. He was investigated, tried and acquitted for a number of episodes linked to the strategy of tension, including the Vaiano bombing in 1974, where in second instance all the neo-fascist defendants were acquitted (including Cauchi and Danieletti), but not the confessed culprit Andrea Brogi, who was instead sentenced to 6 years imprisonment for aggravated slander.[5]

Trained as an Evolian, he offered with Quex an intellectual backing to the phenomenon of 'armed spontaneism', which he saw as a coherent expression of the positions expressed by Julius Evola in Riding the Tiger. In the political documents drafted by Zani at the beginning of the 1980s (Theoretical Position for a Legionary Action; The Problem of the State, a Revolutionary Perspective) the Evolian definition of 'right-wing anarchist' is vindicated and there is a rejection of any idea of hierarchy and organisation, to the point of complete abandonment of the ideal and political tradition of the right and the extreme right of 20th century Europe. Particularly disliked for these reasons by the leaders of the historical formations (Movimento Sociale, Avanguardia Nazionale, Ordine Nuovo) of neo-fascism, once the experience of armed spontaneism was over, no longer being able to transfuse his approach into the world of the extreme right, he ended up moving away from it definitively.

While in prison, he devoted himself to the study of philosophers and political thinkers far removed from his training (Goldsmith, Berg, Sale, Bates, Bookchin, Panikkar) and arrived at 'anarcho-ecologist', municipalist ideal and political positions, attentive to new historical dynamics. He founded the magazine 'Frontiere - comunità, identità, etnie' (Frontiers - communities, identities, ethnic groups) together with Eduardo Zarelli and Jeanne Cogolli, coordinated the editorial staff of 'Tecnologie Appropriate', an ecologist magazine of the GRTA in Cesena, from prison, and wrote 'L'etnicità in Italia' (Ethnicity in Italy), the only study still published today on the relationship between ethnic identities and the formation of the Italian national state. The detachment from his political area of origin, the new studies and the new ideal positions publicly manifested, allow him to use the instruments of Italian prison law (bonus permits, semi-freedom, conditional freedom) and thus to return to freedom in a relatively short time, without having to perform any act of disassociation.

He was finally released in 2008, and is now very active in the editorial and cultural field on ecological issues, criticism of the euro-based economic system, and spiritual growth.

Works

Fabrizio Zani, Eduardo Zarelli (eds.) Terzo Mondo, specchio e memoria dell'Occidente, Macro edizioni, 1991.

Fabrizio Zani, (ed.) Bioregion, a new dimension for Humanity, Macro edizioni, 1992.

Fabrizio Zani, L'etnicità in Italia, Macro Edizioni, 1994.

Fabrizio Zani, Your Free Thought, Edizioni Sì - Studi Interiori, 2010.

Notes

^ Judgment of the Court of Assizes of Bologna 7.7.1984.

^ Nicola Rao, The Blood and the Celtic, Sperling & Kupfer, 2008.

^ Nicola Rao, The Blood and the Celtic, Sperling & Kupfer, 2008.

^ Pier Luigi Vigna, Giorgio Sturlese Tosi, In Defence of Justice, Bur.

^ La Repubblica 2.11.1990, on ricerca.repubblica.it.

Bibliography

Ugo Maria Tassinari, Fascisteria, Milan, Sperling & Kupfer, 2008.

Ugo Maria Tassinari, Guerrieri, Immaginapoli.

Nicola Rao, La fiamma e la celtica, Milan, Sperling & Kupfer, 2010.

Nicola Rao, The Blood and the Celtic, Milan, Sperling & Kupfer, 2008.

Nicola Rao, Il piombo e la celtica, Milan, Sperling & Kupfer, 2009.

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