Anarchists claim Italy attack, target Finmeccanica

MILAN (Reuters) - An Italian anarchist group claimed responsibility for shooting and wounding the head of a nuclear engineering group earlier this week and said it would go after its "murderous octopus" parent company, a letter sent to a newspaper said on Friday.

In the letter, which Corriere della Sera published on its website, a group calling itself the Olga Nucleus of the Informal Anarchist Federation-International Revolutionary Front said it had attacked the head of Ansaldo Nucleare to punish "one of the many sorcerers of the atomic industry".

The group said it planned to TARGET (TGT.NY)Italian aerospace and defence giant FINMECCANICA (FNC.IT) the nuclear unit's parent company and Italy's second-biggest industrial group, with a string of actions.

"Finmeccanica means death and exploitation," the four-page letter said, mentioning the Fukushima nuclear incident and noting that the company supplies "racist" U.S. police forces, "devastating" high-speed trains, and "lethal" fighter jets.

Ansaldo Nucleare Chief Executive Roberto Adinolfi, 53, was shot in the leg by two masked gunmen in Genoa on Monday, triggering fears of a revival of the violent far-left Red Brigades movement of the 1970s and 1980s.

An investigative source told Reuters that police believed the claim to be genuine. The same Italian anarchic group claimed last year to have sent letter bombs targeting, among others, Deutsche Bank's boss Josef Ackermann. One of these wounded the director general of Italy's tax enforcement agency Equitalia.

THREAT OF VIOLENCE

Separately on Friday, leaflets with the words "Red Brigades" and the five-pointed star logo of the Italian Marxist-Leninist group were plastered on the walls of official buildings in Legnano, about 30 km (20 miles) northwest of Milan, police said.

The leaflets, for which no one has yet claimed responsibility, were placed on the facades of the Italian tax agency, the social security office and a local company.

Austerity measures adopted by Mario Monti's government to control Italy's public debt have caused mounting resentment, although protests generally have been peaceful and there have been no real signs of organised political violence.

"The target was a colourless scientist, a technician, a sadly fashionable word these days that behind a fictitious neutrality, hides the long hand of the capital," the letter said, referring to Monti's technocratic government.

Ansaldo Nucleare operates mainly abroad as Italy has rejected nuclear power in two national referendums. Parent company Finmeccanica had no comment on the matter.

Adinolfi checked out of hospital on Friday, flanked with a police escort sent by the Interior Ministry.

"I would like to thank everyone, it's finally finished," Adinolfi told reporters outside his home in Genoa.

Metalworker unions are expected to hold a rally in the Italian port city on Monday, in solidarity with Adinolfi.

"An immediate and collective response is necessary to contain and condemn violence," said FIM Cisl union leader Marco Bentivogli, who called the anarchist group "delirious".

(Additional reporting by Claudia Cristoferi, Antonella Cinelli, Danilo Masoni; Editing by Michael Roddy, Lisa Jucca)