Judge acquits 29 over Acca Larentia Fascist salutes

(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 20 - A Rome judge on Friday acquitted 29 people, almost all members of the far-right CasaPound group, for performing Fascist salutes in January 2024 at a ceremony marking the anniversary of the 1978 Acca Larentia killings in the Italian capital. Prosecutors had pressed charges against the 29 for breaching laws on apology of Fascism. But a preliminary hearings judge ruled the case should not proceed because of the lack of "a reasonable expectation of a conviction". The case regarded the 2024 commemoration although far-right activists make Fascist salutes every year at the annual event outside the former headquarters of the neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) in Via Acca Larentia in Rome to commemorate the death of three far-right youth militants. Hundreds did so at the ceremony last month, with the customary cry "for all the fallen comrades" and the shout "present and correct". In the massacre on January 7, 1978, two members of MSI's youth wing Fronte della Gioventù, Franco Bigonzetti and Francesco Ciavatta, aged 18 and 19, were shot dead, allegedly by far-left militants, in via Acca Larentia, a street named after a Roman goddess. A third MSI youth wing member, Stefano Recchioni, 19, was fatally injured by a stray police bullet during ensuing clashes by members of the Fronte della Gioventù who rioted after the deaths, and police. (ANSA). Read article...

By ANSA