Giuseppe Valerio Fioravanti (born 28 March 1958) is an Italian former terrorist and actor, who with Francesca Mambro, was a leading figure in a far-right terrorist group, Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (Armed Revolutionary Nuclei, or NAR). Fioravanti appeared in films and television from a young age, and in his early teens was the most famous child in Italy. He and Mambro were fugitives wanted for terrorist offences by their early twenties, they spent a further period on the run as suspects in the Bologna bombing. Both were captured after gunfights with police, and later found guilty of responsibility for the Bologna train bombing; they were sentenced to ten life terms, plus 250 years. Fioravanti was released from prison in 2009.
Biography
Background
Fioravanti was born in Rovereto to a Roman family, his father was a television presenter. As a child actor, Fioravanti starred in a popular series of the 1960s, "La famiglia Benvenuti", with Enrico Maria Salerno and Valeria Valeri playing his parents. Fioravanti's younger brother Cristiano had joined a far right youth section aged 13; he acquired a reputation for relishing violent confrontations with leftists. According to Fioravanti, his original motivation for associating with far right militants was not political, but a desire to protect his brother. Fioravanti's parents tried get him away from the escalating violence by sending him to study in the US for a year, he returned to make his last film, which was released in 1975. In early 1977 he was charged with assault, and given 40 days in jail for possession of a pistol. Fioravanti abandoned university studies to join a paratroop unit of the Italian army; he was repeatedly punished for disciplinary infractions. After a crate of hand grenades was stolen while he was on guard duty, Fioravanti was court martialed for leaving his post and sentenced to several months in a military prison.
Francesca Mambro was the daughter of a policeman (who died in 1979), and from a relatively modest background. She met Fioravanti at a far right university club. As activists for the Italian Social Movement they were targeted by political opponents as fascists (Fioravanti himself rejected the label). In a 1997 interview, Mambro said she identified with far right wing youth as underdogs who tended to be on the receiving end of violence. Some of her friends died, including a young Social Movement protester who Mambro saw being shot dead by a Carabinieri captain during disturbances that followed the Acca Larentia killings. The incident alienated Fioravanti's associates, and led to riots during which some Italian Social Movement youths shot at police. Mambro later said the experience made her decide to carry a gun, although her personal involvement with Fioravanti played a major part in her taking up terrorism.
Armed Revolutionary Nuclei
It is believed that at some point Mambro devised the name Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari, but the group was anti-authoritarian and was never formally structured.
Ideology
The late seventies were a time of political violence in the form of bombings, assassinations, and street warfare between rival militant factions. Fioravanti was one of a number of teenage activists in Rome who saw the state-sanctioned far-right political party as betraying them, through inaction in the face of attacks by political opponents and the police. Influenced by leftist movements, a large group of far right youths, including Fioravanti and his close associates, moved from street-fighting to terrorism. Unlike their left-wing counterparts, they emphasised personal qualities like spontaneity and willingness to fight, even in a lost cause, over political objectives. Fioravanti has said, "About defeat we never cared, we are a generation of losers, always on the side of the defeated." Italy was seen as a 'sick', unjust and repressive state. In a 2005 interview, Fioravanti characterized this former rationale for terrorist activities as 'total stupidity', and said 'exultation and rage' in his milieu had fed a collective delusion.
Personnel
The original core members consisted of those close to Fioravanti: Franco Anselmi, magistrate's son Alessandro Alibrandi and Fioravanti's brother Cristiano. Two of the most active terrorists, Gilberto Cavallini, who was a fugitive, and 17-year-old Luigi Ciavardini, became part of the core group after the first armed actions. Others were the part-Eritrean George Vale and Massimo Carminati (later to become a major figure in the Italian underworld). Mambro became active in NAR violence and romantically involved with Fioravanti during 1979. Testimony at their trial described the couple as "always together".