6 immigrants shot in Italy; extremist charged
Man said to have been motivated ‘by racial hatred’
MILAN — An Italian gunman with extreme rightwing views shot and wounded six African immigrants Saturday in a twohour drive-by rampage, authorities said, terrorizing a small Italian city where a Nigerian man had been arrested days earlier in a teenager’s gruesome killing.
Police photos showed the shooting suspect with a neoNazi tattoo on his forehead as he sat in custody and an Italian flag tied around his neck as he was arrested in the central Italian city of Macerata. Authorities identified him as Luca Traini, a 28-year-old Italian with no previous record.
Traini had run for town council on the anti-migrant Northern League’s list in a local election last year in Corridonia, the party confirmed, but its mayoral candidate lost the race. The news agency ANSA quoted friends of his as saying that Traini was previously affiliated with Italian extremist parties like the neo-fascist Forza Nuova and CasaPound.
The shooting rampage came days after the slaying of 18-year-old Pamela Mastropietro and amid a heated electoral campaign in Italy where anti-foreigner sentiment has become a key theme. In recent years Italy has struggled with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants coming across the Mediterranean Sea in smugglers’ boats.
After the attack, Premier Paolo Gentiloni warned in Rome that “the state will be particularly severe against whoever thinks of feeding the spiral of violence.”
In Macerata, Interior Minister Marco Minniti said the gunman was motivated “by racial hatred” and had “a background of right-wing extremism with clear references to fascism and Nazism.”
Authorities said the six wounded — five men and one woman — appeared to be random targets in various parts of the city of 43,000 in Italy’s central Marche region. Italian news reports indicated the gunman’s trajectory included the area where Mastropietro’s remains were found and where the prime suspect in her slaying lived.
The identities and nationalities of the shooting victims remained unknown. Hospital officials said late Saturday that one had been treated and released, while the others had undergone surgery or were facing operations for their injuries. One of them remained in intensive care.
Mastropietro’s remains were found Wednesday in two suitcases days after she walked away from a drug rehab community. A judge Saturday confirmed the arrest of the main suspect, Innocent Oseghale, 29.