Feltrinelli mystery

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32873, 23 March 1972, Page 13

Feltrinelli mystery

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copvriflht) MILAN, March 22.

Magistrates investigating the death of a wealthy Italian publisher, Mr Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, have detained a Left-wing Milan lawyer and arrested a member of the extremist Worker Power movement.

Both men are being questioned in connection with a Left-wing riot in Milan on Saturday week, in which 99 people were arrested and about 100 injured. Mr Feltrinelli was killed on Wednesday of last week by a dynamite explosion next to an electric pylon primed for sabotage. The magistrates have been concentrating their inquiries in the militant Leftwing circles in which the publisher moved. They believe that both the Milan riot and the abortive dynamite attempt on Milan’s main electricity supply may have been part of a Leftwing programme of violence timed to coincide with canvassing for the General Election on May 7. The magistrates are, however, also considering the possibility that Mr Feltrinelli, a friend of Dr Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader, might have been killed by extreme Rightwingers seeking to discredit the Left.

Leaders of the Worker Power movement said today that Mr Feltrinelli was a member of the Left-wing Partisan Action group, which played a part in the execution, in Hamburg in April of last year, of the Bolivian Consul, Mr Roberto Quintanilla Pereira.