Man Climbs to Italian Prime Minister’s Office

A 24-year-old man, shouting that the secret services wanted to kill him, climbed up the facade of the Italian prime minister’s office Wenesday and spent several hours there before agreeing to come down, witnesses said.

The man, later identified as Roberto Pizzoli, climbed onto the top ledge of a window about 13 feet up the facade of the Chigi Palace in central Rome. Prime Minister Bettino Craxi was out of the country at the time, on a short visit to Athens.

As firemen arrived with a ladder and a crowd gathered, the man shouted that an attempt had been made to involve him in a bomb plot and that the secret services wanted to kill him. When he finally came down, police took him to a mental hospital.