The arrests made after the bombing were aimed at a journalistic investigator threatened by the Italian mafia

Italian police on Tuesday arrested four people suspected of carrying out the incident The October bombing targeting a famous journalist who was once threatened by the mafia.

The explosion in the residential area of ​​Pomezia, about 12 kilometers south of Rome, destroyed two cars belonging to Sigfrido Ranucci, known for investigating corruption and the mafia. Ranucci had just returned home at the time, and her daughter had left half an hour earlier, her employer said at the time.

A video shot by Ranucci, who has been under police protection since 2021 because of his difficult investigation, showed the wreckage of the cars and the gate.

The Carabinieri police said that the four suspects arrested near Naples are “highly suspected … of possession, handling and use of explosives in a public place, making threats and causing damage, with aggravated circumstances for forming a group of more than five people and using mafia methods.”

Three of them have been detained before the trial and the fourth is under house arrest.

Ranucci, host of the investigative program “Bika” on public television channel Rai 3, told ANSA news agency the day after the attack that he had received “an endless list of threats.”

The report posted a video on social media on Tuesday showing the suspects being arrested.

“Investigation continues with access to intelligence,” wrote the Report on the X website.

The investigation into the explosion, which is being handled by the anti-mafia prosecutor’s office in Rome, is “particularly complex,” the Carabinieri said in a statement. It involved a close examination of video surveillance systems and phone records, as well as a scientific analysis of the explosive.

The bomb squad is believed to have acted on instructions from “third parties, who have not yet been identified,” the statement said.

“The intellectuals tried to support the defense of the suspects, providing them with funds, dedicated phone cards, and legal assistance and arranging for them to flee abroad,” the statement said.

The blast targeting Ranucci comes on the eighth anniversary of the car bombing of a Maltese investigative journalist. Daphne Caruana Galiziawho wrote extensively about allegations of corruption in politics and business. Like Ranucci, he had faced a number of fraud suits aimed at silencing his reporting.

According to the campaign group Reporters Without Borders, Italy is ranked 56th in the world for press freedom.