PLOT ADMITTED

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 147, 7 June 1932, Page 9

PLOT ADMITTED

ANARCHIST CONFESSES DEATH SENTENCE EXPECTED. SIGNOR MUSSOLINI’S ESCAPE. Rome, June 5. Signor Mussolini’s would-be assassin is named Angelo Abardetto. He admitted that he is an anarchist and wanted to make an attempt on Signor Mussolini’s life while attending the unveiling of a monument of Anita Garibaldi on Jeniculum Hill, but a cordon of troops prevented him. Abardolletto had a thin rubber pad filled with nitro-glycerine strapped to his chest sufficient to blow to pieces himself and anyone grappling with him. Two flat bombs hung to his belt. lie will be tried by a special tribunal and it is expected he will be sentenced to death by shooting similarly to Michael Schirru for plotting Signor Mussolini’s death in 1931.

I’hree earlier attempts on his life are briefly described by Signor Mussolini himself in his autobiography. The first attempt was made by a ‘vulgar Socialist’’ (the words are Mussolini’s) named Zaniboni. He was frustrated, and afterwards revealed the plot, in tears. The second attack was not frustrated but it did 11 Duce little harm. He was about to open the International Congress of Medicine in Tripoli in 1926, when a bullet ripped past his nose, perforating the nostrils and tearing away a small piece of skin A screaming woman with a gun in her hand was immediately arrested. and nearly lynched. She was Violet Gibson, aged 50. Mussolini dabbed his handkerchief to his nose, shouted to the crowd, “It’s all right,” paused to remark to Dino Grand!, “The French again I” and mounted the steps to open the Congress. Later, he shipped Violet Gibson across the frontier and forgot about her. A bomb was thrown at him in Bologna in 1927, but innocent bystanders were the only people hurt.