Italy plans to cancel this year, due to the terrorist risk, the celebration of its armed forces which traditionally takes place on November 4 in Rome, the Italian Defense Minister said on Saturday.
Guido Crosetto did not mention a specific threat but in the context of the conflict between Hamas and Israel and after the assassination of a teacher by a radicalized young man on Friday in France, he said he feared an isolated act.
“The obligation to think of the worst”
“I am thinking of canceling the Armed Forces Day which is held on November 4, because I think it is not useful to increase the risk factors, it is not an ordinary event,” he said. -he said on the sidelines of a trip to Florence.
“Why should I risk offering a platform to an unbalanced person or a group of unbalanced people who want to take action? I have an obligation to think of the worst,” justified the minister.
The fear of an isolated act
“Unfortunately we have recently seen events which owe nothing to criminal organizations, which would have planned an action for years, but to a madman who leaves his house armed with a knife,” Crosetto further explained in an allusion to the assassination of a French teacher stabbed to death Friday by a radicalized former student in front of a middle school in Arras (northern France).
The Day of National Unity and the Italian Armed Forces has commemorated on November 4 since 1919 the victory of Italy alongside its French and Russian allies at the end of the First World War. Chaired by the President of the Republic, a ceremony saw hundreds of soldiers parade through Piazza Venezia in Rome where the tomb of the Unknown Soldier is located.