ABSTRACT: A hard criticism of Minister of the Interior Francesco Cossiga's actions in relation to the murder of Judge Occorsio, to the police aggression against peaceful demonstrators on La Maddalena island, to the "Margherito Case", to the special police squad "Celere II" and the reform of the police corps.

(Tempo - October 1976, from "Marco Pannella - Writings and Discourses - 1959-1980", Gammalibri, January 1982)

He is not a Minister of the Interior: he is a super-minister of police. The prime minister forgot to tell us of this innovation in the report on his program, he forgot to advise us that he had delegated to Francesco Cossiga a regular and intensive activity of attack and offense on the Parliament: to represent, defend, and strengthen the super corps for coups and state-inspired massacres composed of high officials of the Interior Ministry, of generals, police chiefs, spies, magistrates, soldiers and civilians (in the Veneto and elsewhere), of friends of NATO who thrive particularly in "their" turbid Sardinian archipelago. Andreotti had told us that for the problems of state, of civil rights, of internal affairs he was intending to preside over a government that was not generically Christian Democratic but distinctly one-party. Unless - and this is not a hypothesis we feel inclined to discard - Andreotti himself was not aware when he formed the government of what kind of anti-constitutional, anti-parlia

mentary and (why not?) anti-Andreotti program his minister of the interior was planning. Cossiga is a refined person, elegant, courteous. Normally he is discerning and sagacious with a taste for dialogue and intelligent enough to suspect that a democratic future is not entirely to be excluded for our country. So there is good reason to ask oneself why he is dedicating himself with such tenacity to this authoritarian, grimly pro-Fascist police game.

Why then has Cossiga has refused in all possible ways, even at the price of fundamentally offending the institutions, a debate on the murder of Judge Occorsio as has been insistently demanded by all the political forces, with the declared intent of mobilising public opinion, of better preparing the country for the assassins, far less discouraging them from other undertakings of the type? Why, when he was finally obliged to come and speak of it to an Interior Ministry commission, did he do so in such a provocative way as to force even the members of Parliament who support his government to cry scandal? Who was he trying to placate? Why in the month of August, when the police commanded by "his" well-known police chief Voria viciously battered peaceful demonstrators on the island of La Maddelena, did the minister, who was only a few hundred yards away from the scene of the aggression and had people very close to him for witnesses - why did he not only refuse to reply to the questions put to him in Parliame

nt, but took a leading role in the spreading of lies and defamations that were easily disproved by photographs?

Why in the moment when the "Margherito case" broke open, and the Prime Minister himself stubbornly indicated his desire to take the road of justice - why did Cossiga turn into a political refugee from justice, refusing to receive the authoritative solicitations that were following him all over Italy? Why did he refuse to prepare a formal investigation of the Celere II situation, leaving undefended the rights and freedoms of hundreds of police agents, obligatory witnesses at the Margherito trial?

Why is he secretly tampering with the structure and functions of the security services? Why is he trying to put Andreotti himself in front of an irreversible Bourbon-style "reform" of the police forces? Why is he challenging the democratic forces, and in particular us and the Socialists, in such a provocative way on this particular battleground?