CONTENTS:

Preface by Leonardo Sciascia

The Courage of Fear

A City Under Siege

The Appointment With the Violent

Flowers in the Court Room

In the Bunker

The Next One Will Be Adelaide Aglietta

Justice For Giorgiana Masi, Justice For Marshal Berardi

The Via Fani Massacre

The Question of Self-Defense

The Debate Is Open+

Tragedy in the Country, Illegality in Parliament, Boredom in the Courtroom

Curcio: An Act of Revolutionary Justice

Brother Machine-gun

The Referendum Campaign: The Schizophrenia of a Jurywoman

The Word Is With the Contending Parties

The Court Retires, My Job Is Finished

The Reason For This Book

ABSTRACT: Adelaide Aglietta, a woman of Turin, joined the Radical Party (PR) in 1974. After being active in the CISA (Italian Centre For Sterilisation and Abortion) for legalising and liberalising abortion and in the Piedmont branch of the Radical Party, she was the leading candidate on the Radical election list for Turin in the June 20, 1976 elections. The following November she was elected secretary of the PR and reconfirmed in that post for 1978 at the Bologna Congress. Her name was drawn by lots in March 1978 to be a juror in the Turin trial of the Red Brigades and she accepted the task after more than one hundred other citizens had refused it, thus allowing the trial to take place.

Thus Adelaide Aglietta was the first secretary of a party to be a member of a popular jury: her diary originates from this experience on the borderline between public and private life, from the tensions and the contradictions that are necessarily part of the role of juror, above all in a political trial.

At present she is a deputy to the European Parliament.

("DIARIO DI UNA GIURATA POPOLARE AL PROCESSO DELLE BRIGATE ROSSE" - Adelaide Aglietta - Preface by Leonardo Sciascia - Milano Libri Edizioni - February 1979)

THE COURAGE OF FEAR

...My name was drawn - at least so it seems - to be a juror in the Turin trial. I believe that this was the first time that the head of a party has been faced with such an event and not only in the history of our country. [...] So I did not have a moment's hesitation in realising what I had to do. Like everyone, as a woman, as a mother, I did and can have moments of doubt and fear for myself, my children, my comrades and for others. I think courage consists in overcoming fear, not in being fearless. I believe that the courage of fear is something of merit when faced with a death being prepared and imposed by a society that is ever more based on the unstable equilibrium of military and nuclear terror - as faced with every kind of death. For this reason too, for us and for me life is sacred, as are liberty and justice, starting with the lives of others. [...] Therefore, from now on I intend to behave like a possible juror in the Turin trial. Thus I do not intend to express opinions about it; more precisely, i

f I had any opinions about it, I no longer do. I have let the constitutional and moral duty take root in me to assume that the defendants are not guilty, to contribute in assuring them the widest possibilities for defending themselves, to seek the truth by the trial process and, in all conscience, to judge.

I ask allowance to make an appeal to everyone against fear, against violence, against being resigned to experience the murderous violence of either the political powers or anyone else. I refuse to consider that my life or anyone else's is in danger for the simple fact of performing a duty of conscience.