A leading Italian explosives expert has filed a new report on the deadly 2 August 1980 terrorist bombing of central railway station in Bologna, where a court is trying Gilberto Cavallini, a former member of neo-fascist group Armed Revolutionary Nuclei (NAR) over the massacre.
The new report on the bombing prepared by Danilo Coppe Italian paramilitary Carabinieri colonel Adolfo Gregori, includes DNA analysis of remains initially attributed to Maria Fresu, a woman believed to been killed in the attack in which killed 85 people and injured over 200.
The new report confirms revelations by Adnkronos on 14 October that the results of DNA tests on a piece of scalp and part of the facial mask - exhumed in Montespertoli cemetery with what were believed to be Fresu's remains - do not in fact belong to her. Fresu's three-year-old daughter Angela was crushed to death by falling masonry during the blast, together with a friend of Fresu's, Verdiana Bivon, while another friend, Silvana Ancillotti, survived.
DNA tests on the remains from the exhumed coffin, which were formerly thought to belong to Fresu in fact are from two other (unidentified) women. The tests were carried out by Carabinieri captain Elena Pilli, a biologist and forensic geneticist who teaches at the University of Florence.
Taking questions from the appeals court, Coppe and Gregori said that a small quality of explosives were found on a bent piece of aluminium, measuring 10 cm by 3 cm, which was part of some kind of hand-made switch. Metallographic analyses of the exhibit by Marco Boniardi, expert in Failure Analysis & Forensic Engineering at the Milan Politecnico's Mechanics Department, concluded that mechanical pressure had caused the aluminium to bend, not a thermal shock.
