Illicit Networks

Illicit Networks

Anarchist group operating in Western Europe

The last six months in different countries of Western Europe have witnessed a few disturbing terrorist attacks in opposition to different investigative reporters, newspapers and independent media. In Italy, the extensively distributed newspaper known as ABC Newspaper got an explosive device in the form of a parcel. Thus, Rivoluzionario Anarchia, an anarchist group, took the responsibility and threateningly declared that ABC Newspaper was merely one of several newspapers that could be an objective of the war of this group in opposition to the state. The research and studies reveal that the state of freedom of press in Italy is amongst the most unpredictable and unstable in Western Europe, with legal action and violence at times perpetrated by political actors or criminal groups.

Moreover, a device containing cables and powders was sent to Denmark's well known newspaper The News office in Copenhagen, on September 8th, according to The News and Denmark news agency XYZ. Luckily, the bomb did not explode. In a September 13th letter published by an independent newspaper in Denmark, the same anarchist organization Rivoluzionario Anarchia claimed to have delivered the parcel in revenge for The News so-called support of a criminal case in opposition to quite a lot of the "friends" of the anarchist group.

In the past Federazione Anarchica has claimed responsibility for related attacks on media organizations that according them back up "the power structure," together with parcel bombs that burst out at the Chilean and Swiss embassies in Vienna, Austria in 2011, killing the persons who opened them.

A few recent attacks on the media have been targeted at press people and journalists covering organized crime. On 1st January, 2013, a parcel full of bullets was sent from Rome to the independent weekly newspaper Italy News in Milan, Italy. The parcel was full of bullets and also had a card with two pictures of the editor-in-chief of the newspaper and also of an anti-mafia activist, who had been covering news stories on the subject of criminal activities by well known terrorist organizations including Federazione Anarchica. The Italy News was founded in 2010 and publishes weekly news stories and articles on mafia infiltration, waste policy, and corruption.

Potential Transnational Illicit Groups

In this regard, it has been investigated that in order to avoid decapitation and detection, many illicit “dark networks” like Federazione Anarchica use a clandestine-cell structure to conduct specific operations. In formal social network analysis, a cell is a distinct subgroup embedded in a larger cellular network, which consists only of cell subgroups connected by spanning ties. Cells are deliberately kept very small (three to six members), most members only know their cellmates' identities, and the cell leader is the only person to communicate with someone in the larger network. Hence, the risk to the entire network would be reduced if a cell member were captured and interrogated by law enforcement.

Thus, Terrorist and criminal enterprises like Federazione Anarchica have traditionally been assumed to be pathological separate behaviors. Federazione Anarchica's trend in recent ...