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)

FLOWERS IN THE COURTROOM

Saturday, March 4. I spend the afternoon with my comrades, then leave from Fiumicino [airport] on the 11 p.m. plane. I want to spend Sunday with Francesca and Alberta; their possible thoughts, reactions and fears worry me. The plane lands at midnight and Paolo, Elena and Giovanni are there to meet me. We get into Paolo's little car. The atmosphere is not pleasant, the wisecracks hide a fear that has become collective. Someone gets the feeling that we are being followed and says so. Everyone's eyes are concentrated on the rear-view mirror and the windows. But these are the hallucinations of a mad and counterproductive psychological state of whose risks I am only now becoming aware.

Sunday, March 5. All the newspapers have front-page reports about my accepting. They would appear to be accurate, but in reality the reasons I stated for my action do not emerge. The phrases that are reported, outside the general context, only give a partial view of my ideas according to the way the various papers have seen fit to cut them up. Some speculate on the shivers of bloodletting by identifying the juror not as the citizen who believes that justice must be done and who will seek the truth during the trial, but as someone who is prejudiced "against" the defendant. "Roma", a small Naples newspaper, prints a headline: "The PR Secretary Is A Juror In Favour Of The Defense". The writer of the article reported my phrase in the press conference: "I have the deep-rooted duty to presume that the defendant is innocent", thus insinuating that I am in cahoots with the Red Brigades. The article ends like this: "One well understands why Aglietta refused an armed guard". Other dailies only underline an imagin

ary "courage" in the framework of a logic which opposes one violence to another: the violence of the state against the violence of the Red Brigades. The essential spirit of my accepting, which is the existential and political necessity of non-violence anything but passive and disarmed, the appeal for breaking the spiral of violence in Turin and taking back possession of the city streets, the refusal of a bodyguard as a guarantee and the rejection of any suspicion of coercion - dictated by fear - of one's conscience, are all messages which the mass-media, not accidentally, do not transmit because they are all foreign to their mentalities.

For this reason, when a journalist from "Stampa Sera" calls asking me for an interview, I Immediately make conditions: written questions, written answers, uncut publication. The paper accepts and in the early afternoon I bring the journalist my answers and he courteously offers me a ride home. Surprise. The journalist offers me a lodging in case I should need to move. He is the first in a long series of friendly and generous people. I thank him. I do not believe I am disposed to live in clandestinity and suspicion. I see Francesca and Alberta for the first time since I have become immersed in this affair. They seem to be all right. My husband has spoken to them but they appear reticent. I try to understand what they are thinking, whether reading the newspapers has put any ideas into their heads. Francesca tells me she hoped I would accept and when I ask her if she knows why many citizens refused, she says she "knows" it is "something dangerous". We find ourselves talking about the Red Brigades. I speak

to her in my usual way.

Violence generates terror and death. One must change society with the word, with conviction and dialogue. The popular struggles for liberation are something different from violence. No one can elect himself to be the judge and hangman of others. I realise that these are schematic ideas by which I try to ward off irrational reactions which might derive from a poor understanding of the facts, in case some kind of violence should be unleashed on me.

Alberta, the smaller of the two, listens to the whole discourse in silence. Francesca asks me if I am afraid. I say, yes, once in a while I am. But not always. Fear and anxiety overcome me in spurts. I go further. I can see that it helps me too. No, I don't think that anyone can want to have fun shooting at me. In any case, what counts is one's own convictions, self consistency. It has happened to me other times, at least three that I can remember, to put my life into question by following goals I had set myself of collective and democratic growth. While the smaller child embraces me protectively, Francesca jokingly tells me to be careful. I stay a while longer to talk to my husband about the girls. In my opinion they run no risk. They would be more damaged if they were to change their way of living or be escorted by guards. Marco agrees. Any special surveillance would only increase fear, would create a striking difference between them and other children and increase negative traumas.

I take my car and drive to the house of a lawyer where there are other attorneys. I have known them for years by now. They have always been close to the party. I have asked them to inform me, clarify me on questions that I understand only superficially if at all. In fact, I have become aware that I must learn a lot of things in view of what I am going to have to do. I also want to know them because in the evening I will have a "direct line" to the listeners of Radical Radio and it seems right to me that the largest possible number of people should know, should become involved. The lawyers explain everything to me: a juror's functions, the "institutional" mechanisms within which he has to move, the limits of his possible effectiveness. Meanwhile Marco Pannella has arrived from Rome. He too has come for the radio broadcast, but he dwells long - both with me and the lawyers - on the problem of self-defense, on the right, that is, of every defendant to defend himself alone if he should reject the assi

stance of a lawyer of his own choosing or one provided by the court as sanctioned both by Italian law and the Geneva Convention.

At nine p.m. I am on the radio with Marco. Interest is very high and telephone calls arrive non-stop until two in the morning. It is a most interesting revelation. There are those who are curious about my person, there is the push for law and order that asks for the death sentence. I do not enter into discussions about the merits of political evaluations of the BR, much less about the defendants. Marco talks for a long time, attacks the very basis of the choice of violence ("suicidal and homicidal"). I am struck when he speaks of Renato Curcio: "I know his political history: it is entirely consistent". I know very little about Curcio, but I am particularly interested in those who ask me why I go and "judge comrades who make mistakes". I repeat all the reason why I accepted and the Radicals' conception of law. The alternative is not whether to hold or not hold trials, the question is how they are held. I add that I do not know to what degree I can influence on the course of the trial. One listener astu

tely observes that if this trial doesn't manage to reach a conclusion after two attempts we will slowly slip into the position of the West Germans, towards the Stammheim barbarisms, towards the desperate and murderous war among gangs. The more I talk, the more serene and hopeful I become: I realise that without dialogue I am like a fish out of water. At the end of the broadcast I find myself expressing a consideration that I will repeat to myself dozens of times during the long mornings of the trial: the difference between the Red Brigades and us, the very high wall that separates us, is that they act on the belief that "the worse things are, the better they are", "the more criminal the regime is, the more possible are steps towards a different kind of society".

But in this way one does not contribute to changing the state and doing away with violence; one takes the stance of an anti-state that is even more dogmatic than the state because it believes that it can only be created by the struggle of the armed vanguard without a collective growth of civil society, of the masses. I also think that today the non-violent pay a much higher price - political if not personal - than the violent opponents do. Each day, in terms of the possibility of communicating one's opinions, the non-violent are massacred whereas the violent - not by chance - are given the gift of a privileged role.

Late at night we end the broadcast reminding our listeners of tomorrow's appointment in front of the party headquarters to go to the courthouse. Going out the door I notice two individuals sitting in a parked car. On the following days I will often plain clothes agents near my house or party headquarters. I am struck by this fact. When I go to bed anxiety grips me: it is not the Red Brigades that I fear but the spontaneous and isolated act of the "machine-gun soloist" or the little group of fanatics. Then I realise that not even this is the danger. The truth is quite different: if the secret services or the "separate corps" of the regime thought it would be politically valuable to chalk up the assassination of a leftist to the "terrorists", they would not hesitate. I run over in my mind the murkiest episodes of the strategy of tension: Piazza Fontana, the Italicus, the Peteano massacre, the highly ambiguous affair of Lo Muscio and Zicchitella. (1) All of them useless reflections. I am tired and I fall

asleep at once.

Monday, March 6. At three in the afternoon, after having slept late I start out for party headquarters. I am a little tense. It is the first time in which my movements are known and if anyone had the intention to block the trial, wouldn't this be the right moment? I am annoyed with myself as I always am when I become aware that I am not using my head. A psychological spring is triggered that will be decisive from now on: if anyone has the intention of striking me he will have no problem. To continue to be suspicious, to scrutinise the faces of those who pass me in the street is stupid and senseless. I am not the one who is isolated and far from people.

In front of the party headquarters there are already about a hundred people even though it is a working day. I don't know many of them, but they crowd around me affectionately. They have brought me flowers. There is a great bunch of roses sent from Rome by Enzo Zeno. At three thirty we all start off towards the courthouse. There must be about three hundred of us. When I greet Marco Pannella, who is about to return to Rome, I feel a little lonely. Then we invade the wide courtyard of the courthouse. None of the policemen (and there are very many in uniform and plain clothes) stops us. I am struck by it. The city is in a state of siege, the mobilisation and disposition of the police and the army are impressive, yet three hundred people armed with non-violence, with flowers, with serenity manage to occupy the "judicial heart" of the city. When my comrades enter the courtroom, the contrast between them and the greyness and conformity of the place, the togas of the magistrates, the Carabinieri with machine-g

uns around their necks, is even more strident.

While I wait, the Carabinieri captain who heads the bodyguards approaches me: "Do you really refuse to be guarded?" I confirm it. He makes me sign a paper saying that I refuse it on my own responsibility (what responsibility? repsonsibility for my life? for my choices?) When it is my turn I enter the courtroom. The comrades greet me. I become aware that I am still carrying flowers. For the first time I face Guido Barbaro, the president of the Court of Assizes. He asks me if I have any impediments. I answer in the negative and confirm that I am still a resident of Turin. The photographers flash bulbs go off. The chancellor jumps and breaks into a sweat. Barbaro becomes annoyed and observes ironically: "Today there are even some lawyers present". There must be some kind of a quarrel going on. Staring at him I remember having seen him before: he was presiding judge in a trial held two years before against some anti-militarists for whom we organised a demonstration of solidarity. Court rumours depict him as

very hard and reactionary. But rumours are rumours. We shall see.

Together with me, four others have accepted. I have the impression that once my name was drawn there was an increase in those who accepted. Once the "march" is over my father calls me from San Remo. He tells me he will be arriving in Turin the next day. I cannot dissuade him. I go to my dinner appointment with some friends and Gusatvo Zagrebelsky, a young and excellent and likeable professor of constitutional law. Suddenly I look out the window and pull down the shutter. I burst out laughing, or rather we all laugh a long time. We are really not made for the atmosphere of a detective story. I am left with the feeling that everyone is more worried about me than I am about myself, and I wonder if I am wrong. A lot of friends call and offer me hospitality, lodgings, cars.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) Piazza Fontana in Milan was the scene of a terrorist bombing as was the luxury train Italicus. At Peteano three carabinieri were assassinated. The perpetrators were never discovered, but many charges were made against figures in the government as being responsible in order to provide themselves with excuses to impose harshly restrictive public security measures.