ROME (Reuters) - A 28-year-old mystery surrounding the kidnap and murder of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro came back to haunt centre-left leader Romano Prodi on Friday, little over a week before Italy's general election.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi blew cobwebs off the case, reminding Italy of a 1978 seance in which Prodi claimed to have taken part and that offered a tantalising clue about the kidnapped Moro's whereabouts.
Police failed to understand the significance of Prodi's revelations at the time and Moro was later murdered by far-left Red Brigades militants, who dumped his body in the boot of a car, in the most infamous crime in post-war Italian history.
Some Italians suspect that Prodi heard from his contacts where the militants were holding Moro and invented the ouija board session as a way of protecting their identity.
"Mr Prodi, 28 years ago, said he received information about where Aldo Moro was being held from a seance," said Berlusconi, who is trailing his rival in the opinion polls.
"We are faced by two possibilities: Either he was lying, and a man who lies cannot put himself forward to run the country, or he took part in a seance," the prime minister told a television chat show on one of his Mediaset channels.
"I leave it up to Italians to decide if they want to trust the country to someone who, when he has a problem to sort out, turns to a three-legged table, a tray and asks spirits in the afterworld for help."
There was no immediate comment from Prodi.
Prodi has told a parliamentary hearing into Moro's murder that he had taken part in a seance for fun with some of his academic colleagues.
To the surprise of everyone, the spirit of a dead Christian Democrat politician began speaking to them through the ouija board. They asked where Moro was being held. He spelt out a number of place names, and then the word "Gradoli".
Prodi said no-one understood what that meant, but his friends found that it was actually an Italian village near Rome. Word of the seance soon reached police ears and within a week hordes of police descended on Gradoli, but found nothing.
In fact, Moro was being held as a prisoner in a block of flats in a street called Via Gradoli, in Rome.
Almost two months after his kidnapping, Moro was shot dead. Police subsequently discovered where the Red Brigades had hidden him and pressure was put on Prodi, a devout Roman Catholic, to reveal the truth behind the seance.
He has always stood by his version of events.
Italy goes to the polls on April 9-10.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060331/od_ ... N5bmNhdA--
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
