The long series of alarming cases involving minors continues. From the student in Bergamo who attacked his teacher, to the 17-year-old in Perugia who was planning a massacre, to the 13-year-old who played truant yesterday in order to carry out a robbery. And now, today, the Digos unit has detained a 14-year-old — described by the prosecutor as a “skilled chemist” — who slept beside a jar of explosives and was planning to blow up a public office with twenty people inside.
When the boy’s parents opened the door to police officers who came knocking at their apartment in the Porta Nuova district in the middle of the night, they could not have imagined that their son’s bedroom concealed a homemade weapons laboratory and a network of international contacts spanning neo-Nazism to Islamist terrorism.
According to the prosecution, the 14-year-old had stockpiled explosive materials and dangerous chemical substances with the aim of carrying out acts of violence for terrorist purposes. Analysis of his devices revealed his activity on encrypted Telegram channels, and ultimately his final objective: to obtain TNT in order to blow up a public office in Pescara, with an estimated casualty count of between 15 and 20 people. The investigation, which began a year ago, has now reached its conclusion, and the teenager has been transferred to a reception centre in L’Aquila.
