As officials across Europe scrambled to beef up security on Friday in the wake of the London bombings, the tension was clearly greatest here in Italy, a country many experts regard as the next terrorism target.
On Thursday night and Friday, leaders of Italy's Parliament, Foreign Ministry, Interior Ministry, Secret Service and military met nearly round the clock, "evaluating the terrorist menace in Italy and strengthening preventive security measures," the Interior Ministry said.
The pace of the meetings was a tacit acknowledgment of what most of the Italian news media highlighted on Friday, in the words of the daily Il Messaggero: "Now an attack in our house is more likely than ever."
The reasons are simple: Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has been one of the US' staunchest allies in Iraq, committing thousands of troops, despite widespread popular opposition. Also, Berlusconi faces a difficult re-election campaign in the coming months. It is the same sort of situation that preceded the train bombings in Madrid in March last year that killed 191 people.
"Obviously, we are a target because we are engaged in Iraq and we have elections in the next year," said Francesco Sidoti, a security expert at the University of L'Aquila. "Everyone is thinking about that."
The Spanish terrorist attack occurred three days before a national election. After the bombings, the Socialist candidate, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero -- who opposed the war in Iraq -- won handily, beating the conservative incumbent. He immediately withdrew Spanish troops.
While some Italian opposition politicians used the occasion to urge Berlusconi to remove troops from Iraq without delay, others said he should stick to the current course. On Friday, he repeated his previously stated intention to begin removing some troops in September.
Though the Italian Interior Ministry did not release any new security plans on Friday, it did reveal for the first time a few components of its evolving anti-terrorism programs. They include, for example, the addition of thousands of police officers and soldiers to guard potential terrorist targets.
At the airport, border agents pored over the passports and suitcases of incoming passengers, especially those arriving from the Middle East. In Rome's subway system, the police were out in larger than usual numbers.
"I hope it won't happen here, but now the only big one missing is Rome," said a security guard at the station under the Spanish Steps, who refused to give his name.
Though anti-terrorism in Italy is largely the responsibility of national officials, the city of Milan was on "maximum" alert, said a spokesman for the Milan Prefecture on Friday.
"We have a plan that we put into place after 9/11 and perfected after Madrid -- when we saw that a European capital could be attacked -- and it calls for more intense patrolling of sensitive targets," he said.
Video cameras already oversee high-risk areas like train stations and "neighborhoods with a high density of immigrants," said the municipal security commissioner.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
RSS