Italy parcel bombs group may number 350 members

The chief investigator probing a shadowy anarchist movement suspected of sending parcel bombs to European leaders said yesterday the group had caused alarm disproportionate to its size.

Enrico di Nicola, chief prosecutor of the Bologna magistrates office, said the group may have some 350 members in Italy but is less structured than other terror organisations.

No one has been hurt by the parcels. But di Nicola told Reuters he believed the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI) had already achieved its aim.

"I would guess that they may be about 350 in all of Italy," di Nicola said in a telephone interview.

"I think they have caused a greater social alarm... because of the symbols they have chosen and the individuals they have targeted... and I think they already have reached the goal they set for themselves."

Mr di Nicola spoke to Reuters a day after two parcel bombs sent to prominent European Parliament members exploded in Brussels and the British city of Manchester. Belgium said a further seven suspect packages were intercepted.

Both bombs that went off were posted in Bologna. A string of parcel bombs were sent from Bologna last month to European figures and institutions, including European Commission President Romano Prodi.

Mr di Nicola defined members of FAI as "individualists who don't accept any type or organisation, structure or centralisation of decision-making".

Mr Prodi and others working to expand the European Union were ideal targets for the group, which has said it is against the "new European order".

Mr di Nicola suggested the FAI were less dangerous than the Red Brigades, the far-left group that terrorised Italy in the late 1970s and 1980s with assassinations and kidnappings.

"They have nothing to do with the Red Brigades. They don't have the structure, the organisation or the political positions of the Red Brigades," he said.

The bombs that exploded on Monday were sent to Hans-Gert Poettering, head of the largest political group in the parliament, and Gary Titley, leader of British Labour Party members of the parliament. Another package addressed to a Spanish member of Poettering's European People's Party, Jose Ignacio Salafranca Sanchez-Neyra, was sent for tests by Belgian police.