Nuclear boss Adinolfi was shot in the leg (Image: Luca Zennaro/EPA/Corbis)

It’s like something out of Kafka. Anti-science anarchists in Italy appear to be ramping up their violent and frankly surreal campaign. Having claimed responsibility for shooting the boss of a nuclear engineering company in Genoa, the group has vowed to target Finmeccanica, the Italian aerospace and defence giant.

In a diatribe sent on 11 May to Corriere della Sera newspaper on 11 May, the Olga Cell of the Informal Anarchist Federation International Revolutionary Front said it shot Roberto Adinolfi, head of Ansaldo Nucleare, in the leg four days earlier. “With this action of ours, we return to you a tiny part of the suffering that you, man of science, are pouring into this world,” the statement said. It also pledged a “campaign of struggle against Finmeccanica, the murderous octopus”. Ansaldo is one of Finmeccanica’s many offshoots.

The cell has previously targeted nanotechnology researchers, and in 2010 it tried to bomb an IBM lab in Zurich, Switzerland. The attempt resulted in three conspirators being caught and jailed.


In April 2011 the anarchists sent a parcel bomb to Swissnuclear, a group in Olten, Switzerland, that lobbies on behalf of the nuclear industry. The bomb exploded, injuring two people.

Mexican connection

The anarchist federation is also linked with eco-anarchist groups in Mexico that have targeted nanotechnology researchers, injuring two with a parcel bomb sent in August 2011 to the Monterrey Institute of Technology. Others were sent to nanotechnology researchers at the Polytechnic University of the Valley of Mexico and the Polytechnic University of Pachuca in Hidalgo.

In its letter to Corriere della Sera, the federation attacks science and technology, accusing it of serving capitalism at the expense of humanity, and turning everyone into mindless consumers of the world’s resources. “In past centuries science had promised a golden era, but today it is being carried out toward self-destruction and more total slavery,” it said.

“The science-technology pairing has never been at the service of humanity, and in its deepest essence it shows the imperative need to eliminate everything that is irrational, to dehumanise, to annihilate, to effectively destroy humanity,” it continued. “Individuals today are free to realise their subjective selves only through the consumption and production of goods.”

‘European Fukushima’

Turning its attention towards the nuclear industry, the letter warned that “it is only a matter of time before a European Fukushima reaps death on our continent”.

Michael Hagmann, head of communications at the Empa institute in Duebendorf, Switzerland, which investigates the potential adverse environmental impacts of nanotechnology, says that the threats should be taken seriously.

“At least with animal rights activists, you know what they want, but with these anarchists, I’m not sure,” he says. “Do they want us to stop all scientific experiments, stop driving cars or go back to living in caves? I don’t know.”

Until now, the most notorious campaign waged against science and technology has arguably been that by the Unabomber, aka Theodore Kaczynski, a recluse and former mathematician at the University of California at Berkeley. His 20-year campaign of letter bombs killed three and injured 23. He was caught, tried and jailed for life in 1997.