Arrest in case of publisher’s death

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32893, 17 April 1972, Page 13

Arrest in case of publisher’s death

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) MILAN, April 16. The Milan police last night announced the arrest of a man charged with placing explosives at the electricity pylon where a millionaire publisher, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, was found dead—blasted by dynamite—a month ago.

The man, Giuseppe Saba, aged 28, a Sardinian mechanic working in Milan, had been hunted since a warrant for his arrest was issued on March 26. He is the first person to be charged with the attempt to blow up the pylon, which carried Milan’s main electricity supply. Saba was arrested in Milan with a member of the extreme Left-wing “October 22” group. Police believe that there were several involved in the apparent sabotage attempt;

they discovered fingerprints on a Volkswagen van found abandoned near the body. Saba was identified as the man who took the van to a garage for repairs just before Feltrinelli’s death. The charges against Saba, however, include no implication that he was responsible for the publisher’s death.

At the time of the incident. Left-wing groups-immediately said that Feltrinelli, aged 45. a friend of the Cuban Prime Minister, Dr Fidel Castro, a former member of the Italian Communist Party and a backer of extreme Leftwingers, had been assassinated.

Feltrinelli, who inherited a big lumber fortune, was the man whose publishing house, founded in 1954, gave the world Boris Pasternak’s “Dr Zhivago,” Thomasi di Lampedusa’s "Il Gattopardo” ("The Leopard”), and also held the European righto for the diary of the Latin American guerrilla leader, Ernesto “Che” Guevara.