Italy police nab extremists planning to rape Jew

Italy police nab extremists planning to rape Jew
By JTA - January 27, 2013
 

Right wing extremists are suspected of inciting racist hatred, planning to beat and rape a Jewish student in Naples.

ROME – Italian police arrested on Thursday right-wing extremists in several cities on charges of inciting anti-Semitic and anti-foreign hatred and violence and planning to rape a Jewish student.

About 10 people, all between the ages of 21 and 33, were arrested on January 24 in dawn raids in Naples, Salerno and Latina, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.

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According to the Italian media, surveillance tapes of meetings captured “anti-semitic phrases and speeches full of racist hatred.”

One recording caught a speaker proposing “to beat and rape a student whose only ‘guilt’ is to be Jewish,” stated the news site leggo.it.

"They were systematically indoctrinating young militants to hate foreigners and Jews at meetings in which, among other things, they discussed Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf," the site quoted Naples Assistant Prosecutor Rosario Cantelmo as saying.

The extremists were charged with crimes including possession of illegal arms and explosives, subversive association, taking part in political street brawls in Naples in 2011 and violent attacks on left-wing activists using knives and firebombs.

Some suspects were placed under house arrest. Central to the investigation are the activities of three extreme right-wing groups, including Casa Pound, whose members around the country have been linked to violent clashes with leftists.

Casa Pound – which takes its name from the American poet Ezra Pound, who sympathized with Fascism and admired World War II dictator Benito Mussolini -- is fielding candidates in general elections scheduled for next month.

“For a long time we have been signaling a dangerous advance  in Italy of groups from the neo-fascist extreme right,” left-wing MP Emanuele Fiano, who is Jewish, wrote on his Facebook page.

“The news from Naples about extremely serious anti-Semitic activity by Casapound activists intent on planning to set Jewish shops on fire, and theorizing about violence against a Jewish university student, are unnerving,” he said.