Dirty tricks in Italy

Add together a kidnapped politician, a KGB spy, a seance and Romano Prodi, the former European Commission head, and you have the bare bones of an airport thriller. Not so for the Independent, which finds in this tale evidence for dirty tricks campaign ahead of the April 2006 Italian election.

The story begins in spring 1978 with the kidnap of two-times prime minister and Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro by the far left Brigate Rosso, who killed his five bodyguards and held him in a secret location. A few weeks later Mr Prodi was at the country home of a friend in academia with five others. Being wet outside, the seven decided to hold a seance and called up the ghost of Giorgio La Pira, a veteran of Italian politics who had died the previous November.

Where is Moro? they asked. The saucer trembled, span and spelt out the letters G R A D O L I. No one had heard of such a place, but, Mr Prodi told a later inquiry, when they looked in an atlas they found a village of that name in the mountains north of Rome. Word was passed to the authorities. Four days later, vanloads of police descended on Gradoli but without finding Moro.

Weeks later, Moro was taken from his cell in an apartment block on the Via Gradoli in a Rome suburb, put in the boot of a car and shot 10 times at close range.