andy bell

Forty years ago last January, Bow St Magistrates’ Court in London witnessed the audacious re-appearance of the wanted Italian neo-fascist terror cell which had found safe shelter in London. Some of its key members now turned out to support one of their comrades accused of murder and a £10 million bank robbery, and facing extradition back to Italy.  

On 24 January 1983, police from the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Squad, lying in wait in a quiet, affluent street in Chelsea, ambushed and arrested an Italian, Luciano Petrone, who was staying at a flat nearby.

The police were acting on a request from their Italian counterparts who wanted Petrone for the murder of two police officers in Rome several months earlier. He was also wanted by Spanish police for his part in a £10 million raid on the safe deposit vaults of the Banco de Andalusia in Marbella on Xmas Eve.

Other known Italian right wingers had been caught on CCTV during the raid and subsequently arrested in Rome. One of them had then given up Petrone, telling police he was in London.  

Almost exactly a year earlier a group of fugitive Italian fascists, also wanted on terrorism charges, faced extradition in the same court after fleeing to London in 1980 in the face of the huge police investigation into the fascist bombing of Bologna railway station, carried out by their comrades.

The extradition requests from the Italian authorities were turned down, however, because the court decided that a sufficiently prima facie case had not been established. The gang, of which the most prominent members were Roberto Fiore and Massimo Morsello, went on to live in the UK for many years, avoiding prison sentences passed on them in absentia in Italy.

Eventually, when these sentences expired, and they had become extremely rich running dodgy accommodation and employment agencies, Fiore and Morsello returned to Italy to establish a new political party, Forza Nuova, which Fiore leads to this day. 

In Marbella, Petrone had met a wealthy young English woman, Imogen Lucas-Box, and it was at her flat in Chelsea that he was staying when he was arrested. Lucas-Box, it seemed, was quite smitten with her fascist fugitive (though she denied knowing anything of his activities) and turned up at court when he appeared a few days after his arrest to be remanded.

When she emerged from court there were, the press reported, “scuffles” between reporters and unknown young Italians who shepherded her away. Well, they weren’t unknown to Searchlight. We identified them as Massimo Morsello, Marinella Rita and Amadeo de Francisci. The first two bodyguarded Lucas Box while De Francisci harassed press photographers. All three had faced extradition themselves the previous year for terrorism and weapons charges. Reporters who went to Lucas-Box’s flat later that day reported that Morsello seemed to be very much in charge of proceedings.  

In this case, the Italian authorities presented a rather better case and Petrone was ordered to be extradited back to Italy where he was later convicted of the murder of the two policemen. Marinella Rita went on to marry Morsello who died of cancer in 2001.

Roberto Fiore, now one of Italy’s most prominent far right politicians, did not appear at court to support Petrone but was clearly involved in the case: he subsequently fathered a child with Ms Lucas-Box’s nanny. Fatherhood is a not uncommon event in Fiore’s life: to date he has 11 children though it is not clear if this includes the one he fathered with Lucas-Box’s nanny, which he went to considerable lengths to keep secret. 

This is a slightly edited version of an article which appeared in the Winter 2023 issue of Searchlight. Top photo shows Massimo Morsello ushering Imogen Lucas-Box from the court