Italian politicians on Monday were at odds over a neo-Fascist attack in the centre of Verona that some claimed marked a worrying level of political violence.
Nicola Tommasoli, a 29-year-old industrial designer, has been in a coma since the evening of May 1 when he was attacked by a group of skinheads, allegedly because he had refused to give them a cigarette.
Doctors on Monday began the period of observation required before declaring a patient brain dead.
Police said three of Tommasoli's five assailants are already known to them because they have links to a group of extreme right sympathizers in the city, the Veneto Skinhead Front, many of whom are also hard-core 'ultra' fans of the Verona football team.
Neo-Fascists have been linked to 13 incidents in the last two years in Verona, whose mayor Flavio Tosi belongs to the Northern League - a right-leaning populist party frequently criticised as anti-immigrant.
Thursday's attack on Tommasoli immediately came under fire from the political left as symptomatic of an alleged new climate of intolerance that helped the right rise to victory in April's local and national elections.
''We are confronted with a neo-Fascist-style attack that cannot and must not be underestimated,'' said centre-left Democratic Party leader Walter Veltroni.
But both police and local politicians in the northern city have been quick to play down a far-right motive for the crime.
Public prosecutor Francesco Rombaldoni said the attack on Tommasoli was ''not political'' and the story that it was motivated by a cigarette was ''plausible''.
According to Mayor Tosi, ''Verona is not a city of neo-Fascists and it does not deserve this shameful label because of the actions of a few hooligans''.
''Five brutal neo-Fascist thugs like those who beat up Tommasoli have nothing to do with the thousands of good young people who spend time in the centre of Verona every evening,'' Tosi added.
The Verona Student Union hit back at the mayor's remarks, accusing him of belittling the situation and pointing to a ''worrying comeback'' of politically motivated violence.
''We can't accept the fact that we have to feel fear while we walk the streets of our city because of people our own age who commit acts of violence in the name of ideological fanaticism,'' the union said.
''We are tired of being threatened and physically attacked by people who sympathise with extreme right factions''.
Calls to stamp out all forms of extremist violence echoed across the political spectrum on Monday.
''The events in Verona are absolutely reprehensible and shameful,'' said Rome's new right-wing mayor Gianni Alemanno, who has distanced himself from extremists who hailed him as 'Duce' and gave him the Roman fascist salute of Benito Mussolini following his election win.
''We will do everything possible so that policital violence disappears definitively from our cities - in Verona and in Rome,'' he added.
Three of Tommasoli's attackers are currently in custody.
High school student Raffaele Delle Donne, 19, gave himself up to Verona police on Sunday, while metalworker Guglielmo Corsi, 19 and financial promoter Andrea Vesentini, 20, were arrested in the early hours of Monday morning.
Police on Monday appealed again to two other men - thought to have fled abroad - to turn themselves in.
