A final sentence by the Italian court of appeal has absolved the last two people accused of taking part in the terrorist bomb attack at Piazza Fontana in Milan in December 1969. The bomb, which exploded in a crowded bank, killed 17 people and injured 85, and was the first of several terrorist bomb attacks in Italy, which still remain unsolved. At least two of these successive attacks were thought to be connected to the Piazza Fontana bomb: an explosion at an anti-fascist rally, at Piazza della Loggia in Brescia, which killed eight and injured 103 in May 1974, and a bomb explosion on a train, Italicus, near S. Benedetto Val di Sambro, en route from Rome to the Brenner Pass, killing 12 and injuring 50, in August of the same year. A further far more serious attack took place in Bologna 1980 when a suitcase bomb went off in the station, killing 80 and injuring 200.

The appeals court, in its final sentence on the Piazza Fontana case, ordered that the victims and the families of the victims who brought the civil action should meet the legal costs for the trial of the two who have been acquitted.