34 Friday April 8 2022 | the times
Wo r l d
President Macron has depicted
Marine Le Pen as a pro-Russian cham-
pion of antisemitism as he mounts a
counterattack on the right-wing
populist who threatens his prospects
of re-election.
After a lacklustre opening of his cam-
paign, Macron has turned his fire on Le
Pen, leader of the National Rally, casting
her as a potential disaster for France and
urging his team to expose her manifesto
as dangerous and incoherent.
Without naming her, in keeping with
his practice, Macron told le Figaro that
Le Pen, 53, remained the heir to an
unchanged far right despite cultivating
a softer image that has helped her rise
to within striking distance of him if they
both go through to the April 24 run-off
election.
“The fundamentals of the far right
CARL DE SOUZA/AFP/GETTY IMAGESA mafia hitman known as the “Black
Pimpernel” has been jailed for life over
the deaths of 85 people in a 1980 bomb
attack in Bologna, shedding light on
one of Italy’s worst terrorist attacks.
Paolo Bellini, 69, who was also a
member of far-right terrorist groups,
was sentenced for helping to plant the
bomb at the city’s railway station
following two decades of political vio-
lence known as the “Years of Lead”.
As the verdict was read out, the
courtroom silence was broken by the
sound of the victims’ relatives crying.
“This is a huge result after all these
years and a gift to those relatives who
have been living with their own life sen-
tence for four decades,” Paolo Bologne-
si, head of the association of victims’
relatives, said.
A member of the terrorist group
Avanguardia Nazionale, Bellini also
acted as a police informant and an
assassin for the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta
mafia, admitting to 13 murders. He also
allegedly teamed up with the Sicilian
Cosa Nostra, advising the mafia to
bomb the Uffizi gallery in Florence in
the 1990s.
Magistrates alleged that Bellini
planned the Bologna attack with other
fascist terrorists, now jailed, who were
part of a secret cell funded by Licio Gel-
Bologna central station was partly
destroyed by a suitcase bomb
Al-Qaeda chief’s video
ends death rumours
India Al-Qaeda’s
leader has
scotched
speculation
about his death
with a video
backing a
campaign to
allow Muslim
girls to wear hijabs at college.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, 70, above,
praised Muskan Khan, who was
heckled at a pro-hijab protest in
Karnataka, south India. Zawahiri
was seen in a video in September
but did not mention Afghanistan
falling to the Taliban, fuelling
rumours the video was old and he
had died. His intervention was
rebuffed by Khan’s family, who
said: “We do not need al-Qaeda
to speak about our country’s
issue.” Some college heads have
banned the hijab and the matter
will go to the Supreme Court.Survivors of massacre
recognised ‘Isis chief’
Germany An alleged Islamic State
commander has been arrested in
Germany after survivors from a
Syrian tribe massacred by the
group recognised him in Berlin.
The man, identified only as
Raed E, faces charges including
membership of a foreign terrorist
organisation and crimes against
humanity, war crimes and bodily
harm while part of a force that
killed at least 700 people from the
Shaitat tribe in the Deir Ezzor
region in 2014.Containers to be taken
off ship stuck in bay
United States Renewed efforts are
being made to free a 130-tonne
cargo ship stuck in Chesapeake
Bay, Baltimore, nearly a year after
a vessel owned by the same
company blocked the Suez Canal.
Ever Forward was en route to
Norfolk, Virginia, when it ran
aground on March 13. Cranes and
barges will remove 5,000
containers after two attempts to
free the ship by dredging and
tugging failed. The coast guard
said the 1,000ft (305m) vessel
could be free in about a week.Turks send Khashoggi
trial to Saudi Arabia
Turkey The trial of 26 suspects
accused of the murder of Jamal
Khashoggi has been transferred
to Saudi Arabia, a move activists
said “ended any chance of justice”.
Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi
consulate in Istanbul four years
ago. US intelligence has said
Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman, the de facto ruler of
Saudi Arabia, ordered the killing.
The Rane Network of geopolitical
analysis said the court ruling “fits
the wider Turkish pattern of
rebuilding relations with regional
rivals for economic benefit”.Boko Haram faction
head killed by jihadists
Nigeria The leader of one of Boko
Haram’s two rival factions is said
to have been killed by an Islamic
State splinter group as he tried to
defect to the state authorities.
Bakura Sa’alabam, the imam of
Jama’tu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati
wal-Jihad, also known as Bakura,
was killed last month, a source
said. Bakura has been decimated
by the Islamic State West Africa
Province group as it tightens its
grip on areas in the Lake Chad
basin and in Borno state.are always the same: attacks on and
rejection of the Republic, a base of
antisemitism — if not overt, at least
cultivated — very clear xenophobia
and an ultraconservative drive,” he
said.
Macron, 44, who has lost his
position as clear favourite, is
implicitly assuming that Le Pen
will emerge ahead of the ten
other challengers on Sunday to
face him in a repeat of their
2017 second-round run-
off. Macron leads the
first-round field with
about 27 per cent of
the vote while Le Pen
has about 23 per cent,
according to polls.
The president toldFrance
Charles Bremner Paris
his cabinet this week to avoid demonis-
ing Le Pen and focus on demolishing
her manifesto. “We shouldn’t be in the
moral register saying we’re heading for
chaos if she’s elected. That’s not
enough. We have to give priority
to facts,” he said.
A minister said: “We have to
show up the monstrous proposals
of Marine Le Pen on the national
debt and alliance with Russia.”
Le Pen has focused on
raising spending power
by cutting VAT and
other taxes. She aims
to limit access for im-
migrants to benefits,
jobs, housing and
medical care. She
also wants to end
French submission
to EU law and cut
its budget contri-
butions, stepsthat would cause upheaval in the bloc.
Le Pen explained yesterday how her
pledge to ban the headscarf in public
spaces would be implemented. “People
will be given a fine, in the same way that
it is illegal to not wear your seatbelt,”
she told RTL radio.
Macron has highlighted Le Pen’s
support for President Putin, which she
has dialled down since Russia’s invasion
of Ukraine. Macron’s campaign posted
superimposed images of Putin and Le
Pen under the title “Marine Putin”.
Le Pen has criticised the invasion but
refused this week to accept that Russian
forces were responsible for atrocities.
Last week she said she considered Putin
an ally of France and this week she said
the Russian leader, who has welcomed
her to the Kremlin in the past, was
democratically elected and was not a
dictator.
Populists don’t have to be punished by
Putin, Gerard Baker, page 29Macron attacks ‘pro-Russian’ Le Pen as race narrows
President Macron
believes Le Pen will
be in the final run-offItaly jails ‘Black
Pimpernel’ four
decades after
Bologna bomb
Italy
Tom Kington Rome
li, the head of the notorious P2 masonic
lodge which had senior judges, politi-
cians and police officers in its ranks.
Gelli, who died in 2015, was accused
of using right-wing militants to mount
attacks before trying to shift blame to
the far left to scare voters from backing
Italy’s Communist Party, the so-called
“strategy of tension” which helped to
fuel violence in the 1960s and 1970s.
Investigators have discovered evi-
dence that Gelli joined a powerful
former security chief, Federico
Umberto D’Amato, to pay the Bologna
attackers $5 million using funds stolen
from the Banco Ambrosiano, then
headed by Roberto Calvi, a P2 member
who was found hanged under Blackfri-
ars bridge in London in 1982.
“In court, Bellini seemed to be a man
who felt protected,” said Bolognesi,
whose mother-in-law died at the sta-
tion. His son and mother were badly
injured.
Long suspected of involvement in the
bombing, Bellini has previously
escaped jail thanks to an alibi provided
by his former wife, Maurizia Bonini,
who said they left to go on holiday in
northern Italy at 8am on the day of the
attack, which took place at 10.25am.
But she backtracked in court, admit-
ting they had left at lunchtime. She also
recognised him in the crowd at the sta-
tion in an amateur film taken that day
by a German tourist.
After the verdict, which followed 67
trial hearings, Bellini vowed to appeal,
saying that “injustice has been served”.
Bolognesi said he would celebrate.
“This is the result of a 40-year-battle to
show that fascists, led by the P2 and
helped by government officials, com-
mitted this crime,” he said.
Marina Gamberini, a station employ-
ee who was buried in the rubble of the
explosion but survived, told La Stampa
that she had felt “pain, anger and fear”
at the court hearings. But she said she
had insisted on being present to honour
colleagues who had died. “I did it for
them, not for me, for them,” she said.Showing her colours A member of the Krenak tribe at the Terra Livre Indigenous
Camp in Brasilia, an annual protest calling for better protection for land and rights