Who is responsible for the Silvio Berlusconi attack?”
The electronics engineer who attacked Silvio Berlusconi at a rally in Milan on Sunday believed that the Prime Minister was ruining Italy. Massimo Tartaglia, 42, who has been kept in isolation after throwing a marble and metal souvenir into Mr Berlusconi’s face, told police that he hated the Prime Minister because “that man is ruining Italy. I don’t agree with anything he says”. He told police that he had decided to leave the cathedral square “but I heard people shouting, so I went back again. I turned into a narrow side street, I turned round and I saw him just a few steps away from me. He was coming through the barriers. I had a rush of blood to the head. At that point I just wanted to hit him with all my strength. I wanted to make my protest too”. He added: “I did it all by myself.
Moments after a Milan attacker hurled a rock-hard souvenir into Silvio Berlusconi’s face, the dazed and bloodied Prime Minister stood up on the edge of his car so the crowd could get a good look. An aide would later say that Berlusconi, 73, instinctively wanted to assure everyone that he was all right. You might also imagine that the embattled leader was eager for the world to see that – thanks to his haters – he was in fact not all right. Italian police have identified Massimo Tartaglia, 42, as the alleged attacker. Tartaglia’s father told Italy’s Sky News 24 that his son had a long history of mental illness and was not a political activist. Still, one could hardly describe the act as “isolated.” The political climate in the country is edgier than ever, and Berlusconi’s love-him-or-hate-him effect on the electorate has only grown stronger over the past eight months in the wake of a sex scandal and renewed legal battles.
