Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni assured this Wednesday that "nothing has been found" in any of the more than 6,000 schools that, according to the Government, have received during the day bomb threats via emails.
"Today, thousands of Italian schools have received a message in which a bomb was announced. In many centers, the students have been made to leave, the law enforcement forces have searched classroom by classroom and I will tell you immediately what is most important: nothing has been found in any school," the head of the Executive said in a video statement. She specified that, at these moments, the authorities are working "to minimize the impact of these attacks" and continue "verifying each alert."
Meloni expressed her gratitude to the teaching staff for managing the students and to the security forces for having reviewed "within a few hours" "thousands of buildings." She linked these episodes to those also recorded this Wednesday in Ireland and the United Kingdom, with the false bomb alerts from last week that forced the diversion of dozens of flights in different European countries, and with similar messages recently sent to the newsrooms of several States, again without any real danger being detected.
The leader explained that, in light of this situation, she met with the ministers involved and with the top officials in national cybersecurity. From that meeting, she said she takes out three main ideas: that "as of today there is no evidence pointing to a specific danger," that the threat emails "do not aim to cause harm, but to instill fear," and that "the investigators and the Prosecutor's Office are working, together with their European partners, to find out who is behind all of this."
"I am not going to make assumptions; when there are certainties, we will communicate them to you," she added. She also warned that, if in the coming days shipments of this type are repeated, "it will not be a sign that something went wrong, but proof that those who send them have nothing else," to which the country will be "prepared."
Meloni also advanced that this Thursday she will hold a meeting at Palazzo Chigi, the seat of the Government and the official residence of the Prime Minister, with the leaders of the opposition, to whom she thanked "in advance for their presence." She underlined that "with regard to the security of Italians, starting with perceived security, there is no majority nor opposition: there is Italy."
"Whoever has done this wanted a paralyzed nation, wanted a frightened nation," the prime minister has denounced, who concluded her message by stating that the person responsible for the threats "will find themselves with a nation that tomorrow will wake up, will take their children to school, and will go to work, and that is the best and most forceful response that we can give".
Content of the threatening email and links with misogynistic groups
"I am Mikhail Andropov, leader of Vilayat of Misogynistán. We have come to annihilate you. We will carry out a genocide against the Italians," begins the email sent under the subject line "danger alert" to up to six thousand educational centers across the country, according to data from the Minister of Education, Giuseppe Valditara, cited by the Italian agency ADN Kronos.
In the message, the sender claims that they have left "a powerful explosive device controlled remotely inside a plastic bag" in each of the properties affected by the threats, and adds that the alleged organization to which they belong will finish off "with stabbing attacks against the survivors," and that it has also placed "a bomb in the engine of the car of your prime minister".
The text of the email that has caused this Wednesday’s wave of warnings matches word for word the one that was sent on November 2 to 271 schools, with a single variation: then, the sender introduced themselves as the "Body of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard," the influential military arm of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
On the other hand, the reference to "Misogynistán" links to the email sent on November 5 to Fiumicino airport, which triggered a bomb alert on two flights, one coming from Helsinki and the other from Dublin, both bound for Rome. That message was signed by the "Fighters of the Male State" and included expressions such as "all of you are accomplices to a criminal conspiracy. We want to destroy you because of this," and also "we, the Fighters of the Male State, with our actions today will leave a mark in history. Your feminist regime will remember it forever".
Qualified sources explained to Adnkronos on that occasion that the self-styled "Fighters of the Male State" correspond to a well-known ultranationalist and misogynistic organization that spreads hate speech on the Internet, founded in Russia by Vladislav Pozdniakov and characterized by content openly homophobic, racist, and misogynistic.
Integrated into the movement of "radical machismo" and influenced by the 'incel' ideology ("involuntary celibate"), this organization has been under the surveillance of security and intelligence services for some time and appears on the Russian list of banned extremist and terrorist movements.