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 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 APPOINTMENT WITH THE VIOLENT

Thursday, March 2. I arrive in Rome at four in the afternoon after a boring trip. I go home to leave my baggage. Telephone to Gianfranco Spadaccia and then to the parliamentary group. It's a joy to see and talk to the comrades who I worked with every day for a year and haven't seen now for a month. Marisa Galli answers the telephone in her usual brusque and affectionate way, and she tells me that a certain Carabinieri captain has tried to get hold of me by telephone from Turin four or five times and wants me to call him back immediately. I am astonished at so much urgency. Think of a law suit for defamation or for the work of the CISA (Italian Centre For Sterilisation And Abortion, ed.) centres for abortion ("Funny that they should dig up this business just now!"), but in any case I call Turin.

"Are you Adelaide Aglietta herself?" the captain asks me. I answer that I don't know exactly how I can prove it to him on the telephone. The captain tells me then that just the day before my name was drawn for jury duty. I am speechless. I don't know what to say except that until Sunday I have commitments in Rome that can't be postponed. He suggests that I send a telegram to the president of the Court of Assizes telling him that it is impossible for me to be present. At the same time he lets me know that an official written notification will be arriving the next day.

A whirl of thoughts goes through my head: why was my name drawn? Is it possible that it was picked from at least a million others by chance? Is my position compatible with that of a juror's? Must I go as a representative of institutions against which I fight every day? What are the risks I face? Fear grips me. A lot of fear. I think of the children and I even start to cry. Once again suspicion overcomes me: what is behind this? Why a Radical? What are they looking for? After all, our country has been the scene of suspicious operations for years. I do not approve of this trial, but the phrase spoken a few days ago comes to mind: "The trials must be held. All of them". Am I a sitting duck? Have I been picked as a target? I try to think it all out with Giovanni who immediately calls Turin and talks with Paolo. Paolo already knows all about it: in the morning a journalist from "La Repubblica" called the Radical Party and asked for an appointment without specifying the reason. That's how Paolo came to know

a lot of things and quite a few hours in advance. On the previous evening the word was going around that a "big name" from the Communist Party had been drawn. The secretary of the Communist federation confirmed only that "a PCI worker's name had been drawn and they had drawn Aglietta's name" who "it seems has already refused".

Now, knowing all this, Paolo reminds me that Marisa Galli had told me that in the afternoon two journalists had been desperately looking for me at the parliamentary group and with bitter irony I remember Cerasuolo's article in "La Stampa". Yes, the function of the press is very important... I grab a taxi and go to the parliamentary group. We don't enter into any discussion of the merits of the question, but we draw up a communique that announces the fact of my telegram to the Court of Assizes about the impossibility of my being in Turin the following day. We add a question: "What in this case would be the reactions of other party secretaries?" In the evening I try to talk to my husband and the children who are on vacation in the mountains. But it is impossible. It seems that the guests of the Club Méditerranée do not have the right to receive phone calls. Furious I stop trying and I call my father. I know how apprehensive my mother is, how she is always worried about me, about my health. I know her anx

iety during the hunger strikes and I prefer that my father talk to her about it. She absolutely must not learn about it from the newspapers.

After listening to me, my father is silent for a moment, then he asks me what I am going to do. I tell him I don't know but that I am inclined to accept and in any case I must talk it over with my comrades the next day because we must also consider the time I will lose with regard to my party commitments. He tells me that in my position I would do better to refuse. I ask him straight out what he would do. He says categorically that he would accept. In the evening, in bed, anxiety grips me again. I feel as if I am entering a tunnel and I don's know where it is leading to. Once again I think about Francesca and Alberta. How will the children react? Will they become involved?

I call the mountains again and fight with the telephone operator for ten minutes. But there's nothing to be done.

Friday, March 3. The ring of the telephone wakes me very early in the morning. It's Marco, my husband, and he already knows everything. Actually we don't have many ideas to discuss; with him too, a few days earlier, we discussed our feelings about the trial. I ask him to talk to Francesca and Alberta about it. He seems very worried for their sakes. He mentions something about the possibility of sending them away from Turin. I don't agree with the idea. Or at least it seems to early to me and in any case I intend speaking directly with the children about it when I expect to return to Turin on Sunday. I am convinced, as usual, that to hide or minimise the situation with the children is a foolish and counterproductive choice.

I go to the party meeting in the reception rooms of a Rome hotel. Suddenly during the short trip I remember the newspapers. Will the news be reported? And if so, in what way? How important will they make it? I buy all the papers. My eye strikes "La Repubblica". On the first page there is a headline: "The Aglietta Case Explodes". Scalfari has certainly changed his attitude to us after all the censorship or mystifications. We add my call to jury duty in the Turin trial to the order of the day. Marco Pannella whispers a first consideration to me: "It had to happen... sooner or later we had to keep an appointment with the "violent". When you don't choose the facts, the facts make your choices for you". I take a look at the figures given in some newspapers. Rather striking: more than a hundred extractions, but the "yeses" can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Some result the PCI, the archbishop, "La Stampa" have obtained with their shrill calls "against terrorism"...

I look at all the comrades seated around the table: I have had personal and political experiences with all of them. Present are the members of the (parliamentary, ed.) group and the secretariat: the four deputies [to the House, ed.] (Marco Pannella, Emma Bonino, Adele Facio, Mauro Mellini), the two substitute deputies (Marisa Galli and Roberto Cicciomessere), Paolo Vigevano, Sergio Stanzani, Gianfranco Spadaccia, the comrades of the secretariat (Geppi Rippa, Peppino Calderisi, Giovanni Negri, Loredana Lipperini, Mario Signorino). Paolo Chicco has come from Turin.

After other subjects the discussion turns to my possible jury commitment. Everything depends on one question: is a refusal legitimate given my "constitutionally relevant" function as secretary of a party? This is the heart of the question already asked of other party leaders on what they would do if they should happen to find themselves in my situation. We decide that even though I have valid reasons for refusing, these are inoperative since the secretariat and the treasury have ceased to function and so I am free of bonds and commitments. Several people however are prejudicially contrary to my accepting since they are convinced by suspicions of an explicitly hypothesised "regime operation". While we discuss, the hotel porter informs us every ten minutes that there is a reporter on the telephone "who wants to know...". A flash of anger grips me; I think of the seventy- day of hunger strike last year for the betterment of the living and working conditions of prison guards and for an amnesty which were pa

ssed over in total silence. I remember the pleas made to the journalists to publish something, a minimum of space, so that the situation would break open...

My comrades and I are unanimous however on one point: non-violent people can only defend themselves by the linear coherence of their conscientious choices on a level of the widest possible public dissemination of their actions. Therefore let Francesco Cossiga keep any and every one of his men, any and every body guard, far from me. "Protection" on the part of him who, in our opinion, sat at a table and scientifically drew up, planned, sought, constructed and found the criminal act of May 12 (1) can only be a source of peril, never of security.

We set a press conference for the following day. We go back to discussing the importance - with better reason this time - of correct information and knowledge as the only guarantee of my physical security. I must be known not as a symbol but a person with my emotions, my ideals and values, and my motivations as a Radical. The meeting ends and I go home a little less afraid. But my father is very worried, particularly for Francesca and Alberta. I have reflected on the problem of the girls and reply that one must stop being a victim of the logic that creates "monsters". The strategy of the Red Brigades has never foreseen targets who were other than direct political objectives, so there should be no excessive concern for the family members. I also inform my father that I have decided in advance to refuse any armed body guards. He says nothing.

Saturday, March 4. The newspapers are holding a kind of "Radical lottery": will she accept, will she refuse? Once again I can't help but think of the disdain shown by the greater number of information organs during the years and years of battles for liberation. I dwell on the statements of my "colleagues", the secretaries of parties, all of them very "pure", very "intransigent", categorical, sure of themselves. Something seems very fishy to me, perhaps because I too am used to being suspicious of "purity", integrity. I also thing of the existential choice of the terrorist: is it not also a totalitarian and clerical choice for the "purification" of himself and the "enemy", and so a choice that contains the values of expiation and cleansing of sins in a blood bath? As a child I was afraid of the archangel Gabriel "judge and avenger" with a long sword and a golden halo (very different from the likeable layman Robin Hood). However, I go back to reading the statements: Berlinguer, Zaccagnini, Romita (2): non

of them would have a moment's hesitation. The only serious and problematic considerations are offered by the Liberal Party Secretary Valerio Zanone who underlines the objective difficulties for a party secretary of making such an onerous commitment. The secretary of the PRI (Italian Republican Party, ed.), Oddo Biasini, reproves me: not only would he accept at once, but he finds absurd any hesitation or consultation with party comrades.

I go to the parliamentary group quite early because we have to finish writing the statements for the press conference. Marco Pannella and Gianfranco Spadaccia, who are waiting for me, have

tried in vain to arrange a television interview for me: the reply was curt, not even in this case can one obtain the right to speak, two minutes of the news broadcast will be devoted to the affair during which the RAI's (Italian State Radio and TV) editors will "make accurate reports".

We Radicals are often accused of acting like victims, but if any other party secretary had found himself in my place, wouldn't he have been interviewed on television? Why are whole columns of lead and hundreds of government press releases for television dedicated daily to the statements, even the most insignificant, of the "constitutional" (3) parties? Why is every communique of the BR published to the last line? Why between the regime and terrorism must there be only scorched earth at all costs, nothing must exist in regard to information, and if something by chance slips out it is immediately manipulated and minimised.

I go to face the crowded and quite tense press conference room. I talk to the editor of the First TV Program News and to another radio news editor. It is not their fault, but today more than ever, I see them as vultures ready to use me as a face, a person, a symbol without worrying about what I really have to say, what I feel the urgent need to make known. But the dozens of comrades cheer me up who have come and are very affectionate. The press conference begins:

ADELAIDE AGLIETTA: "The Courage of Fear"

My name was drawn - so at least it seems - to be a juror in the Turin trial. I believe that this is 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.

I don't know what I would have done if I had found myself fully involved in my responsibilities as national secretary of the Radical Party. I am not at all sure, in the way that my illustrious colleagues - Zaccagnini, Romita, Biasini, Zanone and Berlinguer - seem to have declared to be yesterday, that I would have and could have given priority to the reasons and responsibilities of jury duty over those of my office which also has constitutional relevance. There are evident contradictions, and the practical ones are not the prime nor the least ones. But it is easy to make a reductio ad absurdum.

But for my part, until new conditions are created, favourable ones that we are trying to bring about so that the Radical Party can again take up its national activities in exercising its constitutional rights and duties, they do not have other tasks for me than those of any active, non-violent, libertarian Radical. Allow me for a moment to offer a consideration that is perhaps not idle, perhaps necessary.

Less than two months ago I returned to Turin. I had decided to put a stop to the party's national activity after 22 years of struggles of unsurpassed civil and political value because of evidence which we had been hiding from ourselves for some time. In the Italy of the '70s, the mere request for the actuation of the Constitution, for the abrogation of the Fascist foundations of the state, for the power holders to respect their own laws, for the acquisition of civil and constitutional rights that are fundamental for each and all - all such requests elicit trials, sentences, discrimination and ostracism; but they also by now demand that one put one's life on the line if one is a pacifist; and the lives of others as well as one's own if one believes in violence and that the end justifies the means rather than that the means determine the ends. In 1977 we had to have dozens of hunger strikes for almost one hundred days for each of us in order to make a few stingy and distorted news items reach the public.

At the same time, in Italy in 1977, it was sufficient to shoot at someone's legs or heart to make sure that the political messages reached 50 million Italians, to be made into ever more important protagonists of the political news and official antagonists of power holders who seemed to want to place scorched earth between their 90 per cent of the parliamentary consensus and the violent "opposition" of the terrorist groups.

In this escalation of the violence of the institutions, the worsening of the Fascist laws for - primarily - the Fascist purposes, literally Fascist, of the RAI-TV and the press subsidised against the great, powerful political struggles of the referendums, against the civil struggles of the "non-violent party", we had and have reached the point where it seemed evident to me that the from now on there would be an inevitable tragic outcome to our thirst strikes in the face of the gravity of the violence, including constitutional violence, of the judgements which we are obliged to disobey. The regime's administration of information, because of its ideology, is consonant with the assassinations of the armed parties.

Thus I took the responsibility of stopping our national political activity against the cost of one's life that it was becoming ineluctably necessary to pay or to risk for the civil battles that it was our duty to wage but which were prohibited.

This then was why I had returned to Turin and began a conversion of our Radical battles.

And it is here that I return again now to find myself personally in collusion with the spiral of violence and fear which thirty years of "constitutional" power have thrown and are increasingly throwing the country. It is here that others seem to have chosen to become in every way similar, and in their worst features, to those whom they are fighting. Therefore 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 when 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.

I have consulted with my party comrades and those of the parliamentary group to better evaluate the possible occasions of political life, in particular those regarding the referendums which we have promoted and the battles to defend the Constitution. Furthermore we have evaluated together the political consequences of my decision which, even if it is entirely a matter for my own conscience, for this reason too and precisely because of this, it cannot help but be as well a concrete example of our common ideals and objectives.

In all of them I have found an equal awareness that it is improbable in these circumstances that we can avoid opposing a common, rigorous and vigorous non-violent action to the spiral of fear with regard to this trial that has now spread and is continuing to spread everywhere, especially here in Turin.

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, if 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. I do not know if the violence is real or supposed for which so many citizens, who in this moment have my full understanding, my solidarity and my esteem, have had the courage of fear. Until further proof, I refuse to suppose it. But this spiral must be broken.

I ask women like myself, the women of Turin, my comrades, to demonstrate their desire for a different life, for a non-violent society, contrary to every assassination and every assassin - to demonstrate it by their simple, silent presence en masse in Via Garibaldi 13 Monday afternoon at 3 o'clock. I ask it of the women comrades, like myself, and the men as well. Let us act as other women have done in more tragic circumstances in Ireland. Let us bring our children and our parents.

I ask that the jurors who have been designated unite serenely, unanimously and in solidarity, to face their task, in the name of non-violence and overcome the fear with which they are trying to degrade us to the level of subjects or cowardly men and women, or at least to try.

MARCO PANNELLA: "Whoever Likes, Can Go Right Ahead"

Anyone who thinks that pacifists are inert and unarmed is mistaken. There is at least one thing that pacifists and believers in violence have very much in common: both of them believe that the historical and social situation in which they live demands that they literally offer up their lives for their hopes and their ideals, to consider that their very lives are involved and to draw the consequences of it. There is a kind of integrity that unites them. But the ones believe that the means betoken and determine the ends, and being libertarians and Socialists, life is sacred for them, above all the lives of their enemies; the others believe that the ends justify the means and enter the adversary's same sphere, they too raising the banner of killing and war, just and sacred.

The very ideology that presides over the life of our state, held erect by Fascist and unconstitutional laws by the will of the anti-Fascists who have been in power for thirty years, makes them choose the "armed party", the terrorists, as the adversary of preference. The press and the RAI-TV have made of them the political antagonists and the protagonists of political news. They censor, suppress, ferociously disfigure the non-violent, the constitutional promoters of the referendums who move among the people and represent majority aggregations of them.

As pacifists we denounce every day the killer violence of power holders who have on their balance sheets the strategy of massacres and the massacre of legality. They have tried and condemned us. But we, as pacifists, know that the choice of the so-called "armed party" is not only murder on the theoretical and practical levels, but it is suicidal if and when it truly participates in the hopes of the left and is not also subjectively an expression of national and international parallel services. In these circumstances, for us the Turin trial must be held. The spiral of fear must be broken once and for all.

Certainly there exist new dangers. Actually they are nothing but the new face of old realities that have always accompanied our Radical battles. We take the occasion to tell Police Minister Cossiga, the man responsible for the Piazza Navona massacre (see note 1) and the killing of Giorgiana Masi, that we will not tolerate being protected by his services. We are armed with non-violence and nothing else. Anyone who likes can go right ahead. He risks nothing except to be indirectly a "government executioner".

GIANFRANCO SPADACCIA: "The Consistency of the Non-Violent"

We thank the secretaries of the other parties who, with great security and no hesitation, have wanted to give their help to our secretary in these circumstances.

We might have preferred more problematic declarations, above all taking into account the fact that their authors, being all elected to Parliament, could never have found themselves in the situation of the Radical Party's secretary.

I do not intend to throw doubt on the sincerity of these declarations, nor easily to do away with the fact of this incompatibility that, in the legislators' intentions, had the value of a guarantee. But the very existence of this norm, if it is not understood as another form of immunity and a caste privilege, shows that in substance, if not in form, the problems the Radical Party secretary has had to face were not and are not simple practical problems. The considerations of the hon. Mr. Biasini are in themselves, furthermore, another confirmation, even if the declarations of Adelaide Aglietta have put to flight any doubts about the nature of her consultations with us.

But for a Radical, for a pacifist, there exists another contradiction that it would be unjust to hide in a moment in which we are compelled to denounce persistent and recent violations of republican legality by the institutions.

During more than fifteen years of political struggle, the Radicals have become acquainted with the regime's justice in other garb than that of jurors - in the garb of defendants, and often of convicts, for crimes of opinion, for being conscientious objectors, for our civil disobedience to Fascist and unconstitutional laws; and as defenders - those of us who are lawyers - of Radicals or others; less often as the plaintiff, but always to defend ourselves against the lies and the violence of adversaries and of state power.

Today one of us is being called to apply those same laws, against many of which we have fought with all the weapons of non-violence, in the guise of a juror.

This is a contradiction, but it is a contradiction which a pacifist cannot avoid.

We are sure that Adelaide will be capable of confronting it with the same strength and coherence which has always marked her struggles, not to assert her own alternative kind of legality, but the respect of that legality which is the source of the legitimacy of government power and of the institutions - the full actuation of the Constitution, the entire application of the domestic and international norms that guarantee the inalienable rights of citizens.

RADICAL PARLIAMENTARY GROUP: The Rights of Defendants to Self Defense Must Finally Be Guaranteed

The Radical Party Parliamentary Group thanks comrade Adelaide Aglietta, national secretary of the Radical Party, for her exemplary decision. Her action must be seen in the light of her indubitable right - if she had seen fit to assert it - to be exonerated from jury duty in the Turin trial because of the indubitable constitutional relevance of her office and for the normal duties consequent on it.

The Radical group on this occasion cannot refrain from firmly and solemnly reasserting that the European Convention on Human Rights and the law of the Italian State guarantee each defendant the right to defend himself, directly or with the aid of legal counsel, according to his preference. This right must finally be respected.

The Radical group has further decided to propose in the next session of the Chamber (of Deputies, ed.) an amendment that abrogates the norm prohibiting members of Parliament of the Republic to be called as jurors in trials of the Court of Assizes.

THE RADICAL PARTY OF PIEDMONT: An Appeal to the Men and Women of

Turin

Our city of Turin is gripped by a dramatic spiral of fear, terror and anxiety these days, and it will be more so in the days to come.

It is in moments of greatest danger, when one fears for oneself and others, when one is evidently afraid of witnessing an impressive escalation of the degradation of civil life that one has the right and the duty, and one must find the strength to confront the situation on an individual and collective level, assuming all the ensuing responsibilities.

In our city today, the only lucid and responsible behaviour possible is to break as quickly as possible the spiral of fear. This spiral is useful for the regime and its logic must be overturned by non-violent action, by the power of the values of the Constitution, of constitutional government, of reciprocal tolerance and respect, of aspirations to peace, and of democratic and republican order.

Those who think this is utopia are not in their right minds. Even less in their right minds are those who believe that the fear will disappear if our city is given a military occupation or the thirty-year-old shame of Fascist laws and even worse aberrations is imposed on the country.

Once again the possibility of overcoming a dramatic crisis depends on the maturity and civility of ordinary men and women, whose ordinariness is far more effective than all the measures, appeals, the hypocritical and useless words of a political ruling class that has created this situation of chaos and public disorder.

Adelaide Aglietta today has done nothing else but given proof of her sense of responsibility. She has done it by confiding in you and putting in you all the trust necessary for such a gesture. In you citizens of Turin and not certainly in the unauthoritative authorities.

Let us break and overthrow the spiral of fear. Let us accept the task of being jurors, let us go into the streets and squares and occupy our city, we citizens, calmly and non-violently, against fear, against chaos, against terror. The first engagement with Adelaide Aglietta is set for next Monday the 6th, at 15 hours, in front of Radical Party headquarters, in Via Garibaldi 13. Let this be the first mass engagement - silent, serene, non-violent and thus truly strong - against fear.

ADELAIDE AGLIETTA TO COSSIGA: I Refuse A Bodyguard

Mr. Minister, I formally request that you give orders to avoid any and all from of armed protection or surveillance [of my person] that local or other authorities may deem it their duty to provide Stop I know no other possible guarantee of serenity and security than that which comes from the absence of arms or guards of any kind - Adelaide Aglietta, national secretary of the Radical Party.

March 4. From the ANSA news agency:

The hon. Benedetto Zaccagnini, secretary of the Christian Democratic Party: "I would accept because it is a question of fulfilling a fundamental civic and moral duty".

The hon. Pier Luigi Romita, secretary of the PSDI: "I have no doubt, I would certainly go. The secretaries of the parties must respect the duties of citizens even more rigorously".

The hon. Mr. Biasini, secretary of the PRI (Republican Party, ed.): "I would accept the charge without hesitation in the knowledge that it involves fulfilling a precise civic duty which regards the individual conscience. It would seem absurd to me, from this point of view, to subject my decision to an evaluation by my party".

The hon. Valerio Zanone, secretary of the PLI (Liberal Party, ed.): "Jury duty, above all in the critical conditions of justice in our country, is one that devolves on all citizens not excluding, therefore, party secretaries. If my name were to be drawn, I would be in the difficult position of reconciling my duties as a deputy and a party secretary, which are public duties as well, with those of a juror. Considering the excessive numbers of refusals which, sadly, have taken place in recent days, I would give precedence to being available for the duty that would allow the course of justice to take place".

The hon. Mr. Pecchioli for the PCI: "I would accept without any hesitation: It is a question of a duty to a democratic state that must be scrupulously observed. I firmly believe in the participation of the people in the administration of justice as confirmed in the Constitution of the Republic".

The hon. Enrico Berlinguer, secretary of the PCI: "I would accept without any hesitation".

Senator Cipellini for the PSI (Socialist Party, ed.): "It is a duty of all citizens to defend the legality of the democratic state and so to administrate justice. And if this is a duty for all citizens, how much more so for the head of a party. It is the right and the duty of the political parties, in fact, to defend the legality of the democratic state, to protect those values that come from far back, from the fighters of the Resistance. For this reason I would perform this civil and political task as a juror in the trial of the BR with serenity, but also with the firmness that comes from the memory of so many comrades and friends who, during the Resistance, sacrificed their lives for those democratic values against which the BR have unleashed their attack. We Socialists, who are holding our Congress in Turin, once again confirm the "no" of democrats to violence and criminality which have nothing to do with the political struggle".

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) On May 12, 1977 police violence broke up a demonstration of students at Piazza Navona sponsored by the Radical Party. A student, Giorgiana Masi, was killed during the demonstration by an unknown person.

2) Berlinguer, Zaccagnini, Romita - leaders of the Communist (PCI), Christian Democrat (DC) and Social Democratic (PSDI) parties respectively.

3) The parties that participated in drafting the Italian constitution immediately after the war.