Italy Arrests Anarchist Network Over Sabotage of High-Speed Trains During the Olympics. They Also Claim Responsibility for a Pipeline Attack on Germany

Italian police detained seven people whom the Rome prosecutor's office accuses of belonging to a militant anarchist network and of sabotaging Italy's high-speed rail lines during the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. A judge sent five of them to pretrial detention, two were placed under house arrest, and all face charges of terrorist conspiracy and subversion of the constitutional order. Two of the detainees are alleged to be behind the February attack using improvised explosives on the Rome–Florence high-speed line, which caused 455,000 euros in damage — and in a statement attributed to the same network, the perpetrators also claim responsibility for the March sabotage of a pipeline supplying both German and Czech refineries. Reuters ↗

The Olympics in the Shadow of Sabotage

The network had a command cell in Rome and others in Bologna, Milan, and Naples, according to the Rome prosecutor's office. During the Milan-Cortina Games themselves, held from February 6 to 22, 2026, a series of attacks struck the Italian railway: the perpetrators set fire to cables in underground shafts along the Rome–Florence and Rome–Naples lines, crippling the signaling system and forcing trains to slow down or switch to slower tracks — delays at hubs such as Roma Termini and Florence reached an hour and a half to two hours. Wanted in Rome ↗

The February 14 attack on the Rome–Florence high-speed line, for which two of the detainees are now blamed, was more serious: improvised explosives were used and the damage reached 455,000 euros. In their statements, the anarchists described the Olympics as a "capitalist showcase" and a "testing ground for mass surveillance." Reuters ↗

A Cheap Weapon, a Wide Reach

The tactic is neither new nor technically demanding: it takes only access to a cable shaft, setting it alight, and knocking out the signaling system — low cost, high media impact. What is new is the coordination — several strikes in different places almost simultaneously — which, according to Italian experts, recalls the attacks on the French railway during the 2024 Paris Olympics. Italian, French, and Greek anarchist circles have long been interlinked and mutually supportive — a shared platform for them, for instance, is opposition to the Turin–Lyon high-speed rail line. Decode39 ↗

Wiretaps Reveal the Plan: "Workshops" on Bombs and Recruitment at Pro-Palestinian Marches

The investigation by Rome's DIGOS unit and the Central Directorate of Preventive Police, coordinated by prosecutor Lucia Liotti, named 36-year-old Nico Aurigemma and 39-year-old Micol Marino as the alleged leaders of the Rome cell. According to the preliminary investigation judge's order, it was they who planted the February device on the Rome–Florence line and left through the back entrance of the occupied Bencivenga anarchist center, which police cleared during the operation. According to investigators, Marino is the partner of Salvatore Vespertino, an anarchist detained in Spain in 2023. All seven detainees (five in pretrial detention, two under house arrest) face charges of forming a group to commit violent acts with a terrorist and subversive aim; the operation was also welcomed by Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi. Il Giornale ↗ ANSA ↗

Wiretaps that investigators installed in a remote house near the village of Vicovaro — where, according to them, the cell secretly met in the summer of 2025, burning notes after meetings and communicating through a shared email account with draft messages and the code phrase "Pinguini tutto ok" — revealed a plan to recruit "new forces". This was to include "workshops" in which more experienced members would teach younger ones how to build devices and carry out direct actions. According to investigators, recruitment was to be conducted in the streets, especially among pro-Palestinian activists; according to intercepted conversations, they cited as a model the violence during the pro-Palestinian march in Rome on October 5, 2024, and explicitly also France and Germany, where, according to cell members, "dozens of pylons and electrical installations are burning" and train sabotage is multiplying. Il Giornale ↗ Fanpage ↗

According to investigators, members also considered procuring raw materials including explosives and weighed using Kevlar when assembling devices; an illustrated manual of German origin for building a reliable explosive device reportedly circulated among the detainees, stating that "with due care, these recipes will be no more dangerous than a barbecue." Investigators list among the cell's discussed potential targets the Rome studios of the La7 television network, defense-sector companies, fast-food chains, and migrant detention centers (CPR) — according to investigators, with the aim of reviving mobilization for "comrade" Alfredo Cospito. Il Fatto Quotidiano ↗

The Attack That Slowed Oil to Germany

In a statement from a website that police link to the network, the perpetrators also claim responsibility for an attack that long defied classification. In late March, unknown perpetrators damaged a high-voltage pylon near the town of Tolmezzo in northeastern Italy; the resulting five-day outage shut down the Transalpine Pipeline's (TAL) pumping station in Paluzza and interrupted the flow of oil — Czech refineries had to draw on their reserve stocks, and the German refineries MiRO near Karlsruhe and Bayernoil in Bavaria also turned to reserves. The pipeline operator initially denied sabotage and spoke of a technical fault, but the company Terna confirmed "damage by unknown persons," and the case was taken up by the anti-mafia prosecutor's office in Trieste together with the ROS special carabinieri unit; Italian and German intelligence services also joined the investigation. Il Sole 24 Ore ↗

TAL is the main artery of non-Russian oil for Austria and southern Germany, and, via the IKL branch, also for Czech refineries — an attack on this system thus touches the energy security of all of Central Europe. At the time of the March outage we reported on it as a technical fault, since no public evidence of sabotage existed then; now the very network that has since been dismantled has claimed responsibility for it. Reuters ↗

Also read: The TAL pipeline stood still for five days. The outage was caused by a power line fault

The Shadow of One Prisoner

The violent core of Italian anarchism has for years mobilized around a single name — Alfredo Cospito. This 58-year-old anarchist, from the circle of the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI), is serving a sentence for shooting Roberto Adinolfi, a manager at the nuclear firm Ansaldo Nucleare, in 2012, and for a 2006 bomb attack on a carabinieri barracks near Fossano; an Italian court reclassified the act as a "massacre against the state" and sentenced Cospito to life imprisonment, later reducing the sentence to 23 years. Al Jazeera ↗

In May 2022 he became the first anarchist placed under the harsh 41-bis prison regime — isolation originally set up against mafia bosses — and his 180-day hunger strike in 2022 and 2023 divided Italian public opinion and politics alike. The campaign to abolish the 41-bis regime has since united the militant anarchist scene, and part of the coverage of the Olympic sabotage reads it precisely as a continuation of this wave of solidarity. BBC ↗

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni welcomed the operation, declaring that it had dealt "a hard blow to those who think they can threaten the nation's security, target strategic infrastructure, and challenge the principles of democratic coexistence." Reuters ↗

Limits of This Account

The number of detainees, the extent of the damage, and the charges come from the Rome prosecutor's office (via Reuters) and have not been independently verified; the detainees are presumed innocent until any verdict. The claim of responsibility for the March pipeline attack is an assertion from a statement attributed to the network — the official investigation is still verifying the connection, and the TAL operator initially denied sabotage. And linking the entire wave to the Cospito case is context and interpretation from part of the media, not a separate charge against these seven people.

The content of the wiretaps, the names of the detainees, and the cell's plans come from the preliminary investigation judge's order, as cited by Italian media; the court has not yet reviewed them, and the detainees are presumed innocent until any verdict.

What hotinfo Is Following

• The trial of the five defendants held in pretrial detention and the two under house arrest.
• Whether further arrests follow in the cells in Bologna, Milan, and Naples.
• Whether the plan to recruit young people and hold "workshops" on explosives remains at the level of intent, or whether its implementation is confirmed.
• Whether the investigation confirms the network's connection to the March attack on the TAL pipeline.
• Further developments in the dispute over the 41-bis prison regime and the Cospito case.
• The risk of copycat attacks against critical infrastructure elsewhere in Europe, including Central European railways and pipelines.