TERRORISM – Rome, the 1982 attack on the Great Synagogue: Justice is the main goal, says jurist Sacerdoti

Alleged terrorists Walid Abdulrahman Abou Zayed, Gamal Tawfik Arabe El Arabi, Mahmoud Khader Abed Adra and Nizar Tawfiq Mussa Hamada were added by Rome’s public prosecutor to the list of suspects for the terrorist attack on the Great Synagogue of Rome that took place on 9 October, 1982. In the raid, 40 people were injured and one was killed, two-year-old Stefano Gaj Taché. The four men, who are currently under investigation for massacre, are supposed to be living between Jordan and the West Bank. But there is another name on the list: Osama Abdel Al Zomar, who has long disappeared. “The truth is finally coming to the surface. The Italian government must do everything in its power to have them extradited,” demanded Victor Fadlun, President of the Jewish community of Rome.
Giorgio Sacerdoti, jurist of international fame and President of the Foundation Jewish Contemporary Documentation Center – CDEC, shared the same hope. “Even though 41 years have passed, seeking justice must remain the main goal. Maybe today it will be easier than back then. The heinous crime that occurred that day, took a back seat in terms of investigations, but now we have the chance to bring it back in the spotlight, filling the voids and the many gaps,” said Sacerdoti to Pagine Ebraiche. “Starting with the intolerable failings that took place on the Italian side, such as the notorious flaws in terms of security,” he continued. Sacerdoti is optimistic. “But we still need to verify whether it will be possible to have those people extradited to try them in Italy.”
Yet, he pointed out, “the trial for the suspected killers of Giulio Regeni (the 28-year-old Italian Cambridge PhD student abducted and tortured to death in Egypt in 2016) showed that it is still possible to proceed anyway, even in absentia. The essential aim must be to get to the bottom of each matter– not only doing justice, but also documenting history.”
It also comes down to a challenge involving the reconstruction of the intimidating environment the entire Italian Jewish community had to live in at that time. Ten days before the terrorist attack on the Great Synagogue of Rome, some left-wing extremists had thrown a bomb in via Eupili in Milan, which had damaged the headquarters of the community, a synagogue, and the CDEC headquarters. According to Sacerdoti, “even today we must worry about the resurgence of a hostile atmosphere, with renewed words of hatred and unjustified criticism.”

Translated by Francesca Pischedda and revised by Annadora Zuanel, students at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, interns at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities – Pagine Ebraiche.