Italian opposition asks: Who led Rome riots?

From The Guardian.

Italy's interior minister today agreed to address parliament on the rioting that broke out in Rome yesterday as Silvio Berlusconi won a controversial vote of confidence to keep his rightwing government alive .

Roberto Maroni of the Northern League gave the undertaking after opposition claims that some of the rioters were police. Anna Finocchiaro, leader in the Senate of Italy's biggest opposition group, the Democratic party, said: "There were evidently people who had been infiltrated [among the rioters] and who put at risk the demonstrators and the police. Who commanded them? Who paid them? What were they meant to cause?"

Photographs taken during the disturbances have prompted not only suspicions but bitter memories of the 1970s when rogue members of the police and intelligence services lent themselves to a so-called "strategy of tension" aimed at raising the level of violence to the point at which it could be used to justify draconian repression or even a coup d'état...

One of the participants in this week's rioting was photographed hurling a dustbin at members of the revenue guard and wielding a long shovel. But in other shots, he appears to be standing with the guards raising a truncheon in one hand and holding a pair of handcuffs in the other.

One blog carried a photograph of a demonstrator being held on the ground by officers whose uniform boots are seemingly identical to his. Further controversy surrounded a revenue guard who was ambushed by rioters.

An official statement said he was rescued "thanks to the intervention of colleagues, some in uniform and others in civilian clothes". But, according to Italian media reports, the revenue guard subsequently briefed reporters to the effect that it never deployed officers in civilian clothing in demonstrations or disturbances...