A far-right supporter suspected of wounding six Africans in a shooting spree in central Italy said the “trigger” for his attacks was the murder of an Italian woman, allegedly by a Nigerian asylum seeker, according to media reports Sunday.
Luca Traini was arrested and taken into custody after drive-by attacks in the town of Macerata wounded five men and one woman from Ghana, Mali and Nigeria on Saturday.
It came a day after a Nigerian asylum seeker and drug dealer, Innocent Oseghale, was arrested in the same town for the murder of an 18-year-old woman, whose dismembered body was discovered in suitcases.
Oseghale, 29, allegedly murdered and dismembered Pamela Mastropietro, hid the body in two suitcases before dumping them in the countryside outside Pollenza near Macerata in Marche.
“I was driving to the gym when I heard on the radio about the 18-year-old girl,” daily newspaper Corriere della Sera quoted him as telling investigators.
“Instinctively I turned around, I went home, I opened the safe and took the pistol and decided to kill them all.”
After the shootings, Traini, 28, allegedly got out of his car, made a fascist salute with a tricolour Italian flag draped over his shoulders and shouted “Viva Italia”, or “Long Live Italy”, and “Italy for Italians”, media reports said.
Police who raided his mother’s home found far-right literature, including a copy of Adolf Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf and a book by fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
Interior Minister Marco Minniti said the attack was part of a culture “of right-wing extremism with clear reference to fascism and Nazism” and deplored that the sole link between the victims was “the colour of their skin”.
He said the “criminal act” was prompted by “racial hatred” and had been prepared in advance.
Oseghale is said to be an asylum seeker with a residence permit, which expired last year. He is married and has a daughter. He, however, stays alone in an apartment, not rented in his name. Police, after searching his flat found 70 grams of hashish, but not heroin.
An autopsy on the body failed to establish the cause of death Thursday, medical sources said.
Carabinieri forensic police found blood-stained clothes belonging to the victim and other blood traces at the suspect’s home. They also found a receipt from a nearby pharmacy where the victim had bought a syringe, reports said.
Oseghale has a record for drugs offences, police said. He was pinned down by CCTV footage of the area where the suitcases were dumped, and by a foreign national who said he saw him carrying the suitcases there.
