Italy prevents a school massacre in Perugia that was prepared by a student inspired by the Columbine massacre

The minor is accused of the crimes of propaganda and instigation to commit a crime based on racial, ethnic and religious discrimination, as well as possession of material for terrorism purposes, the Police reported in a statement.

The detainee, a native of Pescara but resident in Perugia, had the explicit intention of carrying out a massacre in a school inspired by the high school tragedy of Columbinewhich occurred in 1999 in USA. He planned to finish it with his own suicide.

The Columbine massacre (Littleton, Colorado) was carried out by two students, Eric David Harris y Dylan Bennett Klebold. On April 20, 1999, they murdered 12 students and a teacher, injured 23 other people and later committed suicide.

‘Satan’s mother’

Detailed manuals for the manufacture of weapons with 3D technology and guides for synthesizing acetone peroxide (TATP) were found in the minor’s devices.

This substance, known as “mother of satan“Due to its high instability and ease of creation, it was the same one used in the jihadist attacks of Paris y Brussels.

Los Carabinieri They stressed that the seized material also included protocols for the sabotage of essential public services and instructions on the handling of dangerous chemical and bacteriological substances.

The investigation also revealed that the young man maintained direct contact with the leader of the Telegram group.Werewolf Division‘, a neo-Nazi terrorist and supremacist group dismantled in Italy, whose main activity was managed from social networks.

This virtual community promotes the supposed superiority of the “Aryan race” and glorifies perpetrators of massacres such as Brenton Tarrant (Christchurch, 2019) y Anders Breivik (Oslo and Utoya, 2011), whom they describe as “saints” to encourage their emulation.

Obsessed by Columbine

“When I’m in fifth grade, I’ll replicate Columbine“This is one of the messages that the detainee, who is currently in a juvenile center in Florence awaiting the opening of the trial, wrote in a WhatsApp chat in 2024. He was 15 years old at that time.

Among other messages recovered by investigators, is the following: “Maybe one day I’ll go on a shooting spree and then I’ll commit suicide.“. The detainee then stated that he had not decided where to shoot “before I went there.”

Already at the age of 17, the minor had created the Telegram group in which the manuals for building weapons were shared; supremacist, anti-Semitic and racist propaganda documents; and essays inspired by neo-Nazi ideology. Videos and images of child pornography.

In statements to La Republicathe mother of the accused wanted to deny that he was a violent person. “I will stay by his side. I do not accept what he has done, his life has been ruined by beliefs that are not his,” he declared. “I blame myself for not having controlled their social networks“.

The woman claims she asked her son if he would really be able to shoot other boys, and he denied her, stating that he was “just curiosity“. The defense of the accused will maintain that all His publications responded to “delusions” and that he never really considered committing the massacre.

Investigation and arrests in Italy

The operation, coordinated by the anti-terrorist section of the Carabineros (ROS) and the Juvenile Prosecutor’s Office of L’Aquila (center), resulted in the transfer of the young man to a penal center of minors and the registration of seven other adolescents in the towns of Teramo, Perugia, Pescara, Bologna and Arezzo.

The other minors investigated, integrated into “a transnational virtual ecosystem of matrix neo-nazi, accelerationist and supremacist“, are also the subject of investigations for crimes of propaganda and instigation to commit a crime for reasons of racial, ethnic and religious discrimination.

According to the Italian authorities, this digital environment is designed to target adolescents who are especially sensitive to violence and ideological extremism.