Injustice, Italian-Style

by Doug Dowd

Part I: Bologna, Early 1999

“Bell'Italia” it has always been and remains, warts and all. Most of them are trifling, even funny, but some are malignant. Among the latter are Italy's legal and extra-legal systems: the ways and means of its judicial order and the several elements of its official and unofficial “security” structures.

Italian law is unsurprisingly based on Roman law, for better and for worse — the worse allowing double jeopardy, relevant though not central to the focus here. Of much greater relevance are the legal institutions added under Mussolini (like those for the Carabinieri) which, along with open and secret fascist individuals and groups, still function. The various remnants of fascism owe their endurance in largest part to the long-standing intervention by the United States into Italian affairs.

That began in 1943, when Mussolini's government fell as we invaded and occupied most of southern Italy; by the end of the war, we occupied all of it. As in Japan (and except for the formal presence of Britain), we had virtually absolute power: to permit, to promote, or to deter change. Thus, the United States bears considerable responsibility for the basic social structures (economic, political, military) that were created or allowed to regain their hold for the decades following World War II.

Not least was this so for what became Italy's postwar legal/security system and, of course, its connections with the political dynamics of the nation. Throughout, the CIA was omnipresent in the creation and the operations of that system — openly or covertly, whether through financing, suggesting, or even directing operations, to serve the purposes of the Cold War which — in Italy as elsewhere — were being orchestrated even before the end of World War II.

Il Caso Sofri

Of the many ugly consequences of the functioning of that system is the one to be examined here, il caso Sofri, Bompressi, Pietrostefani (“the Sofri case”).

Although the case is uniquely Italian, it recalls sordid episodes from our own history, mixing elements from the trials and tribulations of Sacco and Vanzetti in the 1920s, Hiss in the 1950s, and the Black Panthers (inter alia) in the 1960s. And, as a Guardian (of London) writer has suggested, the Sofri case could be following a script written by Lewis Carroll, except that the madness in Alice was stirred with whims. There is nothing to smile about here.

On January 22, 1997, Adriano Sofri and Giorgio Pietrostefani were found guilty of ordering and Ovidio Bompressi to carry out the murder of Milan Police Superintendent Luigi Calabresi. He was killed on the streets of Milan, May 17, 1972. The trio — Sofri, Pietrostefani, and Bompressi — were sentenced to 22 years in prison. This was in effect, a life sentence, given that they are all over 50.

They were first found guilty in 1990, but that verdict was overturned in 1992 and again in 1993. The 1997 trial once more convicted and placed them in prison, where they remained for nearly three years. A movement for their release and for a new trial was mounted in Italy and elsewhere. This latest miscarriage will be discussed at the end of this paper.

That a crime committed in 1972 should be tried seven times in the 1990s is in itself remarkable by the standards of Anglo-Saxon justice (whatever its own limitations); even more so is that (1) the verdict(s) of guilty were twice annulled, and (2) the sole basis for the initiation of the trials and their conviction was the testimony of a pentito, Leonardo Marino. He claimed — with his tale being offered under the most suspicious of circumstances — to have driven the car carrying the murderer to and from the scene of the crime.

The double jeopardy of (1) is illegal in the United States, and should be everywhere. Quite apart from that, an examination of (2), Marino's part in the trial, plus (and among connected and similar matters) the recent and sharply contrary testimony of a direct and unchallengeable witness of the murder, reveals just how far justice has been miscarried. To understand all that, a fair amount of background is essential.

The Historical Perspective

Whatever his motives, that Marino lied has been ascertained beyond a reasonable doubt. The circumstances of his doing so and what appears surely to have been the deliberate official suppression of vital and conflicting evidence to the contrary sit at the heart of this scandal — to comprehend which requires probing the politics of Italy since the late 1940s, beginning with the substantial and enduring U.S. interference in those politics.¹

Item  For at least the entire course of the war, the Italian antifascist partigiani constituted a crucial element in the struggle against the military operations of both Germany and Italy. An overwhelming majority of the partisans were communists or socialists in fact or in spirit. The Italian Left, already strong before fascism, came back to even greater strength after World War II, its popularity unmatched elsewhere in the capitalist world.

Item  In Germany, Italy, and Japan, the three defeated fascist powers, and necessarily with the consent of the victors, preexisting power structures (economic and political, military and intelligence) came back to function in significant degree. In Italy that degree was at the maximum, and it was there that U.S. control was initiated first (after the invasion of 1943).

It was a consciously “conservative” choice, natural for the victors to make, considering the considerably more radical alternatives. It was not a choice which could be seen as natural for the population in a free election in Italy in 1948, in a country still reeling from fascism, and with a substantial, long-standing, and freshly strengthened left tradition.

In U.S.-held territory, the United States moved swiftly to protect well-known fascist leaders (and followers). Slowly but surely, they were allowed back into positions of much or some power in all quarters of the society — while, incidentally, we in the United States witnessed sentimental and misconceived films suggesting some combination of Dick and Jane and Abbott and Costello in Italy, such as A Bell for Adano.

Item  Bureaucratic positions were relatively easy to staff and stuff. Elections proved to be more complicated — but doable. The first scheduled election was in April 1948. In December 1947 the Communists (PCI) and Socialists (PSI) were undertaking to create a “popular democratic front” — similar to that which had won and held power in France, 1936-38 — led (respectively) by the in fact very popular Palmiro Togliatti and Pietro Nenni.

It was widely expected that, opposed by the then (one might say still) fuddled Christian Democrats (DC) and a scattering of small parties, that popular front would at the very least receive a substantial enough portion of the vote to be critically important in parliament and would, consequently, obtain cabinet ministries; nor was it then inconceivable that they would become the government.

Covertly using Marshall Plan and other funds, the United States moved effectively to subsidize and otherwise produce the electoral victory of the DC — through bought-off newspapers, nourishment of otherwise weak DC-oriented trade unions, and an imaginative scare campaign (including orchestrated letters from relatives in the States) in a manner unprecedented in Italy or, for that matter, anywhere (up to then). With variations to suit changing circumstances, such indirect but effective influence over Italian elections continued uninterruptedly from 1948 through 1968 (according to the 1970s Pike Report of a House committee).

As now will be seen, by 1968 (and not only in Italy, of course), the times they were a-changin', and other means to gain similar U.S. ends had to be — and soon were — developed, the United States for its purposes, the establishment in Italy for theirs.

By 1968, the PCI and PSI had each in its own way begun to be defanged, on the way to their false teeth of the 1980s, et seq. Meanwhile, a different Left had begun to emerge and was rapidly gaining strength. The dynamic for that New Left — not “new” in the U.S. sense, that of being energized largely by students and centered mostly on noneconomic matters — came from workers' discontent with what they saw as unions that no longer responded to their needs. This movement arose most dramatically in the industrial triangle of the North: Turin, Milan, and Genoa.

The workers' movement in turn stimulated a movement of other Left groups in harmony with the factory workers. Of the several groups then arising, among the most effective was Lotta Continua (LC), founded in the fall of 1969. Its leaders included Sofri and Pietrostefani.

Also emerging among these Left groups in Italy in the mid-1970s were some whose rhetoric (like that elsewhere) was violent; and among those were two or three groups (most notably, Brigate Rosse: BR) that went beyond rhetoric to admitted killings of individuals singled out for publicized reasons.

LC ceased to exist in 1976. Neither it nor any of its members practiced violence except, and as was quite common in those days (including in the United States), rhetorically; however, because LC was among the most effective in its politics, and relentlessly critical of — among other elements of the power structure — the security system, it became a prime suspect and target in the case involving the murder of Calabresi. In becoming so, it also came to represent a cruel variation on the strategy of tension.

That strategy, developed with the knowledge and cooperation of the CIA, emphasized right-wing bombings and killings, plotted and executed deliberately to terrorize the citizenry. These were soon followed by sweeping accusations of Left individuals and groups as The Terrorists. Over the years there were innumerable terrorist acts: in 1969 alone there were 145 such attentati, over 100 of which are now known to have been perpetrated by fascists or quasi-fascists. Their aim was to create a rising political pressure for the return of authoritarian control, for a “new order”: indeed, one of groups frequently identified with that campaign was called Ordine Nuovo.² More of this will be discussed later.

The DC and the noncommunist trade unions above-noted were centrist or center-right; like the so-called “conservatives” in the United States, they both used and welcomed those to the right of them, while publicly keeping them at arm's length. There was a mutuality of interests between U.S. policies in Italy and the fascist groups, and that mutuality was critical in the invigoration and strengthening of the broad spectrum of the Right.

From 1943 to the present, those groups constituted the recruiting soil for right-wing terror and its strategy of tension; and though the DC of course never openly supported either the terror or the terrorists, it has been an open secret in Italy that one of the DC's main talents was learning to look the other way when the occasion seemed Right.

Behind it all was the prodding of the CIA. After all — and going back at least to 1947-48 — from the febrile point of view of the CIA, things had been and might well always be seen as pretty “dicey” (as they might say). Setting aside that the principles of U.S. democracy (please don't laugh) insist that it is entirely up to the Italians (and all other nations) to handle their own political processes — setting that aside, then if you're CIA (or of that inclination), things are always “dicey.”

For example, now hear this: the National Security Council (NSC), in its Document No. 740454 of March 12, 1968 — notwithstanding the by then extant weakness of the PCI (and apart from the fact that it both practiced and preached democratic ways and means at least as much as others) — emphasized how important it was “to help out the anticommunist [i.e., extreme Right and fascist movement in Italy] with funds and military assistance…”

It further contended that the Italian army affords “no serious guarantee against Tito's [!] armies...[which] makes it necessary that all forces anticommunist in sentiment should be taken into consideration.” (quoted in Herman & Broadhead, p. 74) (Most will remember that Tito had broken from the Soviet Union in 1948 and was in receipt of substantial U.S. military aid from that time on, up to, including, and after 1968). Details, details. If you're of the CIA persuasion, the total absence of any evidence for subversion is the strongest proof of successful subversion.

That's the larger background against which Italian politics in general were performed after 1943. The main players relevant to the Sofri case are now on stage: the Italian military and intelligence forces — more properly seen as the home of what came to be called “the party of the coup” — and their relatively uncouth bombers and gunners.

Something Happened

The nitty-gritty elements of the Sofri case began with the Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan, December 12, 1969. A few months earlier, Lotta Continua had been founded. Soon after the bombing, Giuseppe Pinelli and Pietro Valpreda, two anarchists not part of LC, were arrested. Pinelli was taken to a police interrogating room. He did not survive questioning: he died of a fall from several stories above-ground. The police claim he fell through a window when dizzy (or he jumped — or something). Those who knew Pinelli's character are quite sure he was thrown or pushed through that window by the police.

Calabresi was not present in the room when Pinelli died, but he was the officer in charge. Valpreda, the remaining suspect, was held in prison for about three years, finally released without either charges or trial (there's no habeas corpus in Italy) — but only after two admitted fascists had been found guilty of the bombing at Piazza Fontana.

Lotta Continua had a newspaper, in which it kept up a constant clamor concerning the circumstances of the bombing (in which sixteen people were killed and many wounded) and, even more, the circumstances of Pinelli's death and Calabresi's responsibility. Though Calabresi was murdered in 1972, Sofri, et al., were not charged with the crime until 1988, sixteen years later, well after LC had ceased to function.

The belated case against Sofri, et al., came into existence under very mysterious circumstances. It was formally initiated when Marino — ex-LC himself — made a “confession” to the Carabinieri. He suddenly felt compelled (sixteen years later) to announce that he had been the driver of the car shepherding the murderer to and from the scene. Whether the confession was his idea, the Carabinieri's idea, or some mixture of the two is still unknown. What is known is twofold: (1) the “facts” related by Marino are inventions, and (2) since his confession his life has improved in many ways.

Much of what is now to be related that substantiates the absurdity of Marino's claims was made possible by a much-needed — and belated — change in Italian law, after Sofri's latest conviction. Until then, what in our judicial system is called discovery — wherein defense and prosecution have the right to examine in advance the evidence that each will present in court — was not part of the Italian legal system. Now it is, and Alessandro Gamberini, lawyer for the Sofri case, in going through what the prosecution has (with)held, has come up with much of what follows.

The prosecution can prove Sofri, Bompressi, and Pietrostefani are innocent. This new evidence also refutes Marino. It is of primary importance, of course; but it leaves unanswered two questions: (1) How can the Italian legal system explain this suppression of exculpatory evidence? (2) Will the revelations that it has done so be sufficient to bring about a new trial?

Provable Innocence

Below we look at only three parts of that new of evidence — (1) that concerning Marino, (2) the testimony of an eyewitness whose solid identification of the true murderer was suppressed, and (3) testimony placing Bompressi (the supposed killer) in Tuscany at the time of the shooting.

1. Marino's memory and sudden good fortune Leonardo Marino was a member of LC, very much an admirer of Adriano Sofri, in what seems to me to have been a fawning, but disappointing relationship for Marino. By the 1980s he was scrounging for work, and by 1987 he had been found guilty of robberies.

We begin with the indisputable facts: Sofri, Pietrostefani, and Bompressi were given 22 years and Marino, as the result of his confessional testimony, was given 11 years. The three went to prison, while Marino's punishment has been annulled. Next: The defense (the lawyers for Sofri, et al.) discovered — and it has now been admitted — that there were many occasions upon which Marino had met with the Carabinieri, sometimes at night in his own house, with these meetings transpiring for weeks before his “confession.”

Following his belated revelation, Marino's economic circumstances immediately changed for the better. His days of struggling (and robbery) were now over. He was now comfortable, and a small businessman. A genuine success story — also puzzling, if his confession is taken out of it.

Sixteen years later Marino says, oh yes, he was the driver of the murder car. More than one witness (all this in testimony suppressed, until now) described the driver as a woman with smooth blond hair. Marino at that time had dark and curly hair, and a large moustache.

2. Gnappi, the ignored eyewitness Immediately after the murder of Calabresi, an eyewitness — Luciano Gnappi — who recognized the murderer from a photograph shown him by two police, went to the policeman in charge — misnamed Allegra (“happy”) — to say that he recognized the murderer. (The man he recognized was not Bompressi.) Repeatedly, the head of the police behaved as though the man were not speaking. (And when, in December 1997, a reporter from La Repubblica, the largest Italian journal, sought to interview Allegra, he was repulsed.)

In 1969, Gnappi was so frightened that he decided to desist — it being common knowledge in Italy already that ongoing massacres were often followed by depistaggi (the creation of false trails) and associated misdeeds. It was also common knowledge that at least seventeen eyewitnesses to the Piazza Fontana massacre were never heard of again, were either killed or disappeared.

But Gnappi changed his mind again. In January 1997 Sofri et al., had gone to prison, and their lawyer Gamberini had been allowed to search through the materials of the past. When Gamberini found the name of Gnappi and proceeded to interview him — having no idea of what he would find — Gnappi found himself unable not to repeat his story. Bompressi was not the man he saw. It took courage for him to say that, even so many years later.

3. Bompressi — known to be far from the scene of the crime When the Sofri case first began, with the 1988 accusation by Marino, two witnesses affirmed that at the time of the crime, the accused murderer, Bompressi, was far from Milan, for they had seen him in his hometown of Massa (in Tuscany). They were brushed aside as being untrustworthy, because they had been members of LC. Now, newly-revealed evidence shows that another man — a member of the Massa vigili (police), not of LC — also saw Bompressi in Massa at the same time.

Conclusions and Prospects

The conviction of Sofri, Pietrostefani, and Bompressi rests entirely upon the counterfactual testimony of one man who has materially gained from giving it — a man whose testimony is directly contradicted by witnesses, and contaminated by the circumstances accompanying and following it. We do not know who did kill Calabresi; we do know that Bompressi did not.

After Lotta Continua ceased to exist in the late 1970s, Adriano Sofri returned to his philosophic and political studies, becoming a professor — an esteemed and admired professor. He has been not only a fine teacher and author of several respected books, but one who, in the midst of the past nine years of difficulty and strife, has managed to continue his struggle for a better world — for example, to spend serious time in Chechnya and Bosnia, and returned to report on the tragedies.

When the latest conviction came down, Giorgio Pietrostefani was with his family in France, continuing his struggle for a better world, working to improve the lot of drug addicts and the homeless. Under French law, he knew he could not have been extradited.

Ovidio Bompressi is a bookseller who, like Sofri, has done voluntary work in ex-Yugoslavia. All three men have been out of Italy off and on since 1988, their passports intact. All three had the opportunity to stay out of Italy when it appeared they would be sent to prison. They remained or, in the case of Pietrostefani, returned to Italy knowing full well what their probabilities were. Such is not the behavior of criminals; but type of Marino's “confession” has indeed become common among such, big and small.

When Sofri, Pietrostefani, and Bompressi were in Lotta Continua, they were fighting to make an indecent world less so; as we have seen, they have continued to do so. Their history since being imprisoned is itself striking. They have refused to ask for amnesty (which not long ago was granted to six terrorists), because that would be an admission of guilt. They have demanded a new trial. An extrajudicial movement is necessary to enable them to get that new trial, their only hope of freedom and justice. There was small but real chance of getting that new trial; in it, they would have an excellent chance of winning their freedom — on the basis of evidence. That is, if facts matter.

The main problem is that trial would not only reveal their innocence, but also reveal the substantial and ongoing guilt of the Italian legal and extralegal systems. It's about time.

There are groups in Italy, in Germany, France, and Britain who are working in their cause. Given the involvement of the United States in this whole sordid history — if for no other reason — there should be a movement for their freedom also in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

You can write them at (among other places) Comitato Liberi di Bologna, c/o Camera del Lavoro, Via Marconi 67/2; ortel/fax (with answering machine)at 011/39/51/6087373; or go online to their web site:

http://www.sofri.org

or e-mail the Comitato at

liblib@innocent.com

Part Two: February 2000

The new trial was finally obtained. The new evidence was produced, but the trial went on as though it had not been!

The verdict was guilty: the three have seventeen more years in prison remaining to be served. Adriano Sofri was immediately taken into custody and whisked away to prison. After the trial, he said, “This is such an injustice, I cannot even speak about it.” Ovidio Bompressi and Giorgio Pietrostefani are in hiding.

Just three days after the verdict, the lawyer for the man who fingered Bompressi stated that now his client believes he may have misunderstood a conversation with Sofri — that is, that his “confession” was mistake.

A new — and final appeal — is under way.

Notes

1. There has been considerable in depth research of this kind of intervention by the United States in support of right-wing or outright fascist individuals and groups (in Germany, Greece, Korea, Central America, Vietnam, etc.). We confine our attention to one book on Italy: Edward S. Herman and Frank Broadhead, The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection (New York: Sheridan Square Publications, 1986). Their focus is on the disinformation campaign regarding the attempted assassination of the Pope in 1981. That required them to examine the overall U.S. involvement to be noted here (most fully in their Ch. 4), for the light it shed on that “campaign.” With little further acknowledgment, I shall depend upon the latter book for some details.

It is relevant to add that I lived and worked in Italy 1966-67, and have done so over half of each year since 1983, enabling me to follow some of the pertinent developments directly. return to text

2. And their actions suited their aims: right groups are known to be responsible for at least the massacres of

(1) the bombing of a bank at the Piazza Fontana, Milan, December 12, 1969 (a key element in the Sofri case, of which more later),

(2) the bombing of a train from Florence to Bologna, and then of the train station in Bologna (killing and wounding hundreds of people),

(3) another bombing in Brescia, and possibly

(4) the bombing of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (although the Mafia — seldom an innocent bystander in the larger development — is seen as the likely doer of that deed). return to text

June 24, 2003