Calabresi murder and background
On 12 December 1969, the Piazza Fontana bombing took place in Milan, killing 17 people and wounding 88. Among those arrested and investigated there was the militant anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli. On 15 December 1969, while in police custody, Pinelli fell from a fourth floor window of the police building in Milan. The policemen present in the interrogation room claimed that Pinelli committed suicide, but many leftist circles believed him to have been murdered.
Despite the established fact that Calabresi wasn't even in the room at the moment of Pinelli's death, he became the target of an extensive left-wing media campaign, which accused him of being a manslaughter and lasted years. It was led especially by the newspaper of Lotta Continua (directed by Sofri at the time) and by the left-wing mainstream weekly L'Espresso . Lotta Continua newspaper explicitly wrote that Calabresi had to be "shot dead".
An initial investigation in 1970 ruled Pinelli's death as an accident.
On the morning of 17 May 1972, Luigi Calabresi was shot outside his home while going to work.
Aftermath and effects on public opinion
Between 1971 and 1975, Milan prosecutor conducted a second thorough investigation for manslaughter on the policemen sharing the room with Pinelli. In 1975 he concluded that Pinelli fell down because he had fainted and collapsed on the window parapet, after he had approached the door-window to take some air (he had been kept in custody for two days and he hadn't received a lot food, he had been interrogated for hours in the room, it was an historical building and the parapet of the window was particularly low). The faint hypothesis was the only one consistent with the trajectory and the weight of the body of Pinelli.
16 later in July 1988, Leonardo Marino, an ex-activist of Lotta Continua who said that he was moved by religion and a sense of guilt, turned himself in to the police and confessed of taking part in the assassination of Calabresi. Marino explained that he drove the car while Ovidio Bompressi shot the policeman. He said that the assassination had been decided by Adriano Sofri and Giorgio Pietrostefani, the leaders of Lotta Continua. Sofri was then arrested with the two other partners.
The Piazza Fontana bombing, Giuseppe Pinelli's death, Calabresi's assassination and their subsequent investigations and trials are remembered as some of the most important events during the Years of Lead.
First trial, retrial and European Supreme Court. Escape of Pietrostefani.
On 2 May 1990 in Milan, Sofri was convicted and sentenced to serve 22 years in prison. Pietrostefani and Bompressi also received 22 years, while Marino was sentenced to 11 years due to his collaboration.
In July 1991, the Court of Appeal of Milan upheld the convictions, but these were cancelled the following year by the Supreme Court of Cassation asking for a new proceeding. [note 1] With a new judgment by another section of the Court of Appeal of Milan, Sofri and the others were acquitted in 1993. Unusually, when the trial arrived for the second time at the Supreme Court, the sentence was canceled again and a third proceeding was requested. It took place and Sofri was convicted with the partners by yet another section of the Court of Appeal of Milan in 1995. Finally, the Supreme Court in its third review confirmed this judgment, ending the trial with a conviction in 1997. [5]
After 2 years of prison, in 1999 Sofri and Pietrostefani asked and obtained by the Supreme Court a temporary suspension of the sentence and a retrial. This is an exceptional measure, quite unusual in the Italian justice system, and it was granted because of the complicated legal path and the high political pressure on the first trial at the time. In the meanwhile, they were released from prison waiting for the hearings; these were held by the Court of Appeal of Venice, the only one accepting to do the procedure at the time. In 2000 the Court celebrated a new trial and sentenced a confirmation of the convictions, later ratified by the Supreme Court. While Sofri accepted the sentence and returned in prison, Pietrostefani had already fled in France. He remained fugitive and never came back to serve its sentence, because French authorities refused to extradite him under the Mitterrand doctrine. [6]
In 2003 the European Court of Human Rights refused yet another appeal made by Sofri and Pietrostefani for another retrial, calling it "inadmissible" and sentencing that their trial had been fair: [5] "the trial inspected [by us] did not deteriorated the rights of the defense" and "did not deteriorated the equity of the proceeding". [7]
Opinion movement for presidential pardon
Throughout all the proceedings there was a large opinion movement in favor of Sofri, made by relevant politicians, intellectuals and artists such as Dario Fo, Erri De Luca, Carlo Ginzburg, Giuliano Ferrara, Gad Lerner, Luigi Ciotti, [8] Walter Veltroni, Piero Fassino, judge Ferdinando Imposimato, [9] [10] Marco Pannella. [11] [12]
At the end of November 2005, Adriano Sofri suffered of Boerhaave syndrome while in prison. He was moved to the hospital and lots of national figures asked the President of the Republic to give him a pardon. However Justice Minister Roberto Castelli refused to do the request to the President. After the defeat of Silvio Berlusconi at the April 2006 election, the new government's Justice Minister Clemente Mastella announced that Sofri could be pardoned. However Sofri refused to make a formal request, saying the request by himself would have been like an admission of guilt. The Justice Minister commented: "The truth is that 34 years after the events Sofri is a very sick person to whom one can offer a spontaneously humane gesture". [13] In the end Sofri did not receive a pardon, but from 2007 he was allowed to serve his sentence under house arrest for medical reasons. The 22-year sentence ended in January 2012. [14]
Cesare Battisti is an Italian former member of the terrorist group Armed Proletarians for Communism (PAC), who is currently imprisoned after years on the run. PAC was a far-left militant group active in Italy in the late 1970s during the period known as the "Years of Lead". Battisti was sentenced to life imprisonment in Italy for four homicides. He fled first to France in 1981, where he received protection under the Mitterrand doctrine.
The Piazza Fontana bombing was a terrorist attack that occurred on 12 December 1969 when a bomb exploded at the headquarters of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana in Milan, Italy, killing 17 people and wounding 88. The same afternoon, another bomb exploded in a bank in Rome, and another was found unexploded in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The attack was carried out by the Third Position, neo-fascist paramilitary terrorist group Ordine Nuovo and possibly certain undetermined collaborators.
Giuseppe "Pino" Pinelli was an Italian railroad worker and anarchist, who died while being detained by the Polizia di Stato in 1969. Pinelli was a member of the Milan-based anarchist association named Ponte della Ghisolfa. He was also the secretary of the Italian branch of the Anarchist Black Cross. His death, believed by many to have been caused by members of the police, inspired Nobel Prize laureate Dario Fo to write his famous play titled Accidental Death of an Anarchist.
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L'Espresso is an Italian progressive weekly news magazine. It is one of the two most prominent Italian weeklies; the other is the conservative magazine Panorama. Since 2022, it has been published by BFC Media..
Pietro Valpreda was an Italian anarchist, poet, dancer and novelist.
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In Italy, the phrase Years of Lead refers to a period of political violence and social upheaval that lasted from the late 1960s until the late 1980s, marked by a wave of both far-left and far-right incidents of political terrorism and violent clashes.
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Luigi Calabresi was an Italian Polizia di Stato officer in Milan. Responsible for investigating far-left political movements, Calabresi was assassinated in 1972 by members of Lotta Continua, who blamed him for the death of anarchist activist Giuseppe Pinelli in police custody in 1969. The deaths of Pinelli and Calabresi were significant events during the Years of Lead, a period of major political violence and unrest in Italy from the 1960s to the 1980s.
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Lotta Continua was a far-left militant organization in Italy, during the historical period of social turmoil and political violence in the country known as the "Years of Lead". Its leaders Adriano Sofri and Giorgio Pietrostefani ordered the assassination of police officer Luigi Calabresi in 1972. Militant Cesare Battisti later joined other organizations and repaired in France after being convicted for four homicides. Some other militants later joined the more famous Red Brigades. After the disbandment of the organization, various former militants became influential Italian politicians, journalists or writers.
Carlo Biotti was an Italian judge, the President of the Court of Milan and a Magistrate of the Supreme Court of Cassation. His forced recusal from the case brought by the widow of Giuseppe Pinelli against the police commissioner Luigi Calabresi in 1971 became a cause célèbre.
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The assassination of Sergio Ramelli was a political crime that took place in Milan, Italy, in 1975, during a period of violent and often deadly confrontations between rightists and leftists in the country at the time.
Giorgio Pietrostefani was a leader of Lotta Continua. In 1988 the pentito Leonardo Marino accused him of ordering the 1972 murder of Luigi Calabresi. Pietrostafani was convicted in 1997, along with Sofri, Ovidio Bompressi, and Marino himself. While free pending an appeal, Pietrostefani fled to France, which refused to extradite him under the Mitterrand doctrine. In 2021 the French government arrested him, along with six other left-wing activists convicted of crimes in Italy. However, in 2023 France's highest court refused to extradite him.
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