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SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY

Anarchists Attack Science

from Nature News

A loose coalition of eco-anarchist groups is increasingly launching violent attacks on scientists.

A group calling itself the Olga Cell of the Informal Anarchist Federation International Revolutionary Front has claimed responsibility for the non-fatal shooting of a nuclear-engineering executive on 7 May in Genoa, Italy. The same group sent a letter bomb to a Swiss pro-nuclear lobby group in 2011; attempted to bomb IBM's nanotechnology laboratory in Switzerland in 2010; and has ties with a group responsible for at least four bomb attacks on nanotechnology facilities in Mexico. Security authorities say that such eco-anarchist groups are forging stronger links.

On 11 May, the cell sent a four-page letter to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera claiming responsibility for the shooting of Roberto Adinolfi, the chief executive of Ansaldo Nucleare, the nuclear-engineering subsidiary of aerospace and defence giant Finmeccanica. Believed by authorities to be genuine, the letter is riddled with anti-science rhetoric. The group targeted Adinolfi because he is a "sorcerer of the atom," it wrote. "Adinolfi knows well that it is only a matter of time before a European Fukushima kills on our continent. Science in centuries past promised us a golden age, but it is pushing us towards self-destruction and total slavery. With this action of ours, we return to you a tiny part of the suffering that you, man of science, are pouring into this world." The group also threatened to carry out further attacks.

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