Italy’s government opened a probe into a series of documents published last week that appear to affirm that the country's government roughly 40 years ago agreed to not interfere with Palestinian attacks on Jewish targets.
Included in the documents was the 1982 Great Synagogue of Rome attack by Palestinians, which killed a two-year-old toddler and wounded 37 others.
According to the publication, Italy's then-government knew of the intentions to carry out that attack but did not act on it.
A journalist for the Italian magazine The Post Internazionale Elisa Serafini said that the intelligence organizations at the time were aware of the attack, “but no protection was applied to the synagogue.”
“An investigation has been promoted by a supervisory commission and this is something that we do in Italy when there is something that is shady.”
“The case is open, and there’s a political debate over that. People are asking the government to have more transparency on this issue,” Serafini added.
According to the investigation, only one of the five assailants involved in the attack was caught - a Palestinian student in Italy at the time - who was arrested on the Turkish-Greek border with 33 pounds of explosives.
“The supervisory commission asked intelligence organizations to provide documents, and those documents revealed that there were warnings on possible terrorist attacks that were completely ignored,” Serafini continued.
She assured that a bill recently passed to reveal more documents over the Rome case, but that because it happened over 40 years ago, “it’s not that easy.”