Italy’s counter-terrorism unit has arrested a 17-year-old planning a neo-Nazi inspired school massacre. It is the latest in a series of alarming incidents raising urgent questions about youth violence and online radicalisation.
Italy’s elite military police unit has arrested a teenager on terrorism charges after investigators uncovered an advanced plot to carry out a mass killing at a school, modelled on the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in the United States.
The the ROS, the Special Operations Group of the Carabinieri, carried out the operation, codenamed “Hate.” It involved simultaneous searches across four Italian regions. The teenager, from Pescara but residing in the province of Perugia, had planned to carry out the school massacre and then take his own life.
The Plot
Investigators found he had been working on the construction of weapons and chemical devices. He had also been looking at manuals and technical information on the manufacture of explosive devices and firearms. Among the seized material were documents containing technical instructions on dangerous chemical and bacteriological substances, as well as guides to sabotaging essential public services.
Among the materials recovered were instructions for producing TATP — acetone peroxide — a highly unstable explosive nicknamed the “Mother of Satan”. This chemical was used in the Brussels and Paris terror attacks. Investigators also found material related to the construction of 3D-printed firearms.
The teenager was a member of a Telegram group “Werwolf Division.” The group celebrated the actions of mass shooters including Brenton Tarrant, who carried out the Christchurch mosque attacks, and Anders Behring Breivik, responsible for the Oslo and Utøya attacks in 2011. They were both elevated to “saints” within the group to encourage imitation.
The boy had already been searched as part of a previous investigation in Brescia into individuals suspected of belonging to far-right virtual groups with radical neo-Nazi, supremacist, xenophobic and antisemitic positions. The current investigation, launched in October 2025 by the L’Aquila anti-crime unit, stemmed from that earlier anti-terrorism operation, codenamed “Imperium,” which concluded in July 2025.
A wider network
The arrest was not an isolated action. Alongside the arrest, the Carabinieri carried out seven searches against minors in the provinces of Teramo, Perugia, Pescara, Bologna and Arezzo. All seven are under investigation for incitement to commit crimes on grounds of racial, ethnic and religious discrimination. Furthermore, they all appear to be embedded in an international virtual ecosystem of neo-Nazi, accelerationist and supremacist groups.
The network is transnational, investigators noted, pointing to the broader challenge of online radicalisation that crosses national borders through social media platforms.
On the order of the juvenile court in L’Aquila, the teenager is now in a juvenile detention facility. He faces charges of possession of material for terrorist purposes and propaganda and incitement to commit crimes based on racial, ethnic and religious discrimination.
A crisis of youth violence
The arrest comes at a moment of acute national concern about violence among young people in Italy. Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara said the case confirmed the need to address social media with greater urgency, calling for collaboration with technology companies to find solutions beyond simple age restrictions. “It’s a great challenge, unfortunately it is the issue of the moment and it is a very dramatic one,” he said.
As we reported separately, the Perugia arrest follows an incident last week in Trescore Balneario in the province of Bergamo, where a 13-year-old stabbed a 57-year-old French teacher in the neck and abdomen at his school, seriously injuring her. The youth filmed and livestreamed the attack on his phone.
