Cafe bombing a puzzle

Press, 19 September 1985, Page 8

Cafe bombing a puzzle

NZPA-Reuter Rome The Rome police are interrogating a Lebanese-born Palestinian to try to determine a motive for a grenade attack that injured 39 people at a Rome cafe on Tuesday. The man, who gave his name as Ahmed Ali Hossein abu-Sereya, aged 28, was arrested after a chase near the fashionable Via Veneto.

Two Soviet-made fragmentation grenades were thrown at the Cafe de Paris, near the United States Embassy, on the Via Veneto, the street that was once the hub of the Roman style of

nightlife immortalised by Federico Fellini in his 1960 film, “La Dolce Vita” (The Sweet Life).

Twenty-six foreigners were among those injured by one grenade, which exploded at the pavement cafe thronged with tourists. A second grenade failed to explode. The most seriously injured person was Ernesto Bacchi, aged 39, the cafe’s cook, who was serving as a waiter. Mr Bacchi was operated on for a severed artery. Rome’s police chief, Marcello Monarca, said that abu-Sereya at first had showed a Moroccan

passport but later admitted it was false. The Palestinian smiled broadly and proclaimed his innocence to reporters as he was taken out of police headquarters yesterday. The principal owner of the cafe, Giuseppe Daddei, aged 43, a man of Syrian and Italian parents, told the police he knew of no motive that would make the cafe a target for guerrilla attack. By yesterday there had been no claim of responsibility. Mr Monarca said that he did not believe the attack was aimed at any one national group at the cafe. The United States Embassy said that there was no

reason to suspect an antiAmerican attack.

The police chief said that abu-Sereya, born in the Bourj el-Brajneh refugee camp, on the outskirts of Beirut, had said he was a Palestinian fighting for his people’s cause but that he had denied making the attack.

He had been walking away from the scene of the attack and broken into a run when he realised the police were following him. The police said that abuSereya’s air ticket had showed he had arrived from Damascus via Vienna on August 25 and had an open return booking.