Maniac Unabomber

The Italian Unabomber, the elusive psychopath who has terrorised the Venice area for 12 years, struck again at the weekend when a 28-year-old man picked up what he thought was a message in a bottle on the seafront, only to have it explode in his hands.

Massimiliano Bozzo, a male nurse, lost his thumb and two fingers on his left hand and was wounded in the chest and neck. He was walking with his fiancée at Porto Santa Margherita, near Venice, when he found the corked wine bottle with a sheet of rolled-up paper inside wedged in rocks where the River Livenza emerges into the Adriatic.

The cork was attached by wire to nitroglycerine explosive and a battery hidden inside the paper. Witnesses said that Signor Bozzo fell to the ground screaming in pain when he pulled out the cork and the bottle exploded. His fiancée, Giorgia Ghezzo, 24, suffered damage to her eardrums and was cut by flying glass.

“The message was that the Unabomber is still active,” a police spokesman said. “This was a message of death. Quite possibly he was watching near by.”

Since late 1993 the unknown attacker, described by police as “someone with a grudge against humanity in general and children in particular”, has planted explosives in beach umbrellas, cigarette lighters, eggs, tubes of tomato paste and mayonnaise, and even church electric candles.

Boobytrapped items intended to harm children have included Easter eggs, soap bubble containers, felt-tipped pens and jars of chocolate spread.

In March last year a six-year-old girl was hurt when an electric votive candle exploded in a church.

“Everyday objects have become bringers of death,” the newspaper Il Giornale said.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks, which have injured 33 people. Last July a woman discovered an unexploded device beneath the saddle of her bicycle at Portogruaro.

Every incident has happened near Venice, Treviso and Pordenone.

Vittorio Borraccetti, the chief prosecutor in Venice, said: “We are playing a chess game with this maniac.”