--- aliases: - Peteano bombing - Peteano massacre - Strage di Peteano category: Terrorism Event created: 2026-05-17 location: Peteano, Friuli, Italy start: 1972-05-31 summary: The Peteano bombing of May 31, 1972, in which three Carabinieri were killed by a booby-trapped Fiat 500 near Gorizia, was carried out by Ordine Nuovo member Vincenzo Vinciguerra, whose subsequent confessions in 1984 directly implicated the Italian stay-behind network and led magistrate Felice Casson to uncover the Gladio documents that forced Andreotti's 1990 parliamentary disclosure. tags: - Event - Italy - Terrorism - StrategyOfTension - Gladio - Neofascism - 1970s title: Peteano bombing updated: 2026-05-17 --- The Peteano bombing occurred on May 31, 1972, near the village of Peteano in the Friuli region of northeastern [Italy](/places/italy/). Three Carabinieri (military police) officers were killed and two injured when a booby-trap bomb exploded as they investigated an abandoned Fiat 500 that had been left on a road with a note claiming it had been used in a crime. The attack was part of the [strategy of tension](/programs/operation-gladio/) and proved foundational to the eventual exposure of the [Gladio](/programs/operation-gladio/) stay-behind network eighteen years later.[^1] ### The Attack The three Carabinieri who died - Donato Poveromo, Franco Dongiovanni, and Silvio Bellini - responded to a report of the abandoned vehicle. When they opened the hood of the Fiat 500, they triggered a charge packed into the engine compartment. The bomb used C4 plastic explosive - a military-grade material that was not commercially available in Italy, a detail that investigators initially suppressed. Initial investigation blamed the [Red Brigades](/organizations/brigate-rosse/), then a new organization operating in northern Italy. No charges were brought for years. [SID](/organizations/sismi/) (Italian military intelligence) was later found to have provided false forensic evidence in the initial investigation, misidentifying the explosive used as a different material consistent with civilian manufacture, in order to prevent the military-grade identification from pointing toward the stay-behind network's weapons caches.[^1] ### Vincenzo Vinciguerra's Confession In 1979, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, a member of [Ordine Nuovo](/organizations/ordine-nuovo/) who had fled to Spain after the attack, surrendered voluntarily to Italian authorities in 1979. In 1984, facing a life sentence, he made a voluntary confession to the Peteano bombing and provided detailed testimony about the network that had organized and protected the attack. Vinciguerra's testimony was explicit: the attack had been carried out with the knowledge of elements of SID, weapons from the Gladio stay-behind network's caches, and with the expectation of intelligence service protection from prosecution. He described a structure in which neofascist operatives provided deniable capacity for attacks that served the strategy of tension's political objectives of creating fear and justifying authoritarian responses. Vinciguerra was convicted and received a life sentence. He subsequently continued providing testimony and statements that constituted the most detailed first-person account of how the strategy of tension network functioned operationally.[^1] ### Felice Casson and the Gladio Documents The Peteano case was reopened in 1984 by [Felice Casson](/people/felice-casson/), a young Venice investigating magistrate. Pursuing the explosive identification discrepancy and Vinciguerra's testimony, Casson obtained access to SID/[SISMI](/organizations/sismi/) records. In 1990, Casson discovered documents in SISMI's archives that directly referenced the Gladio stay-behind network and its arms caches. Casson requested authorization from the government to access further classified Gladio materials. Prime Minister [Giulio Andreotti](/people/giulio-andreotti/), faced with the disclosure request, chose to acknowledge the network's existence to Parliament on October 24, 1990. The Peteano bombing - a single attack in a remote Friulian village in 1972 - thus became the direct chain of evidence that forced the exposure of the entire NATO stay-behind infrastructure eighteen years after it occurred.[^2] [^1]: Ganser, Daniele. *NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe.* Frank Cass, 2005, Chapter 4. Willan, Philip. *Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy.* Constable, 1991. [^2]: Italian Senate Commissione Stragi. *Final Report.* Rome, 2001. Flamini, Gianni. *Il Partito del Golpe.* Bovolenta, 1982-1985.