Italy’s Deputy PM Matteo Salvini has said that an investigation into a “Ukrainian group’s” plot to kill him was what led to a major seizure of weapons, including an air-to-air missile and neo-Nazi memorabilia, by police this week.
Speaking in Genoa, Salvini told media that Italian secret services had alerted him to a Ukrainian group planning an attempt on his life and that he “flagged it up” with the police. “It was one of several death threats against me that arrive every day,” Italy’s ANSA news agency quoted him as saying. He said he was happy the threat had “served to uncover the arsenal of some madmen.”
Italian police said on Monday that a cache of weapons, including a French-made air-to-air missile, had been seized from a neo-Nazi gang operating in northern Italy. The police statement originally said the group had fought against Donbass separatists in Ukraine’s eastern breakaway region. The statement was later amended, however, to say that the extremists in question had “taken part in the armed conflict” in Ukraine, without specifying a side.
Western media had a field day with the news, immediately linking the neo-Nazi gang to what they said were “Russia-backed separatists,” apparently misquoting the initial police statement that said just the opposite.
When contacted by RT over its misquotation, Reuters responded with a thank you “for bringing it to our attention” and corrected the story. The corrected paragraph now states that “a police official declined to say who they [the neo-Nazi group] had been fighting for.”
Also on rt.com MSM link Italy neo-Nazi weapon haul to ‘pro-Russian separatists’ despite police saying the OPPOSITEThe Italian police have since told RT there had been an “error” in the initial press release and claimed that police had not said anything about “which side” the fighters were affiliated with. However, not only the original press release, but also the press conference about the raid clearly referred to the neo-Nazi group’s alliance; the head of the Turin Counterterrorism Service, Luigi Spina, said it “had helped Ukrainian nationalist groups in the fight against pro-Russian Donbass groups,” as quoted by the Il Giornale journalist Roberto Vivaldelli.
It’s emerged that among three men arrested during the raid was Fabio Del Bergiolo, a former border security inspector who had run in Senate elections for the neo-fascist Forza Nuova party in 2001, Italian media reported.
Police found assault rifles, a sub-machine gun, bayonets, pistols, shotguns and Nazi plaques, as well as the missile, which the group reportedly obtained from Qatar and was allegedly attempting to sell.
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