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 NEXT ONE WILL BE ADELAIDE AGLIETTA

Friday, March 10. At nine a.m. I am at the Lamarmora Barracks. On arriving a captain informs me of the assassination of Marshal Berardi. The place strikes me as even more lugubrious. The Carabinieri are tense and shocked. I ask who this marshal was, why they chose just him. They tell me that for several years he had been part of the anti-terrorist squad, the one that captured Ferrari. For the last two years he had had a quiet job in the Porta Palazzo district. I am drowning in impotence and anxiety, overwhelmed by the atmosphere of death that these facts manage to generate. I rebel against this delirious, insane thinking. How many times we have said it: in this way they fall into the trap of the ruling powers, one assists the regime which needs a violent antagonist in order to be able to go on legitimating its own violence. I am filled with a great sadness at all this which is nothing but the negation of hope, of optimism, of dialogue, of serenity, and so too of the physical right to life.

All of it will certainly have repercussions on the trial, will increase the tension and will reflect negatively on these defendants. I approach the other members of the jury with the curiosity to know who they are, what they do, what they are thinking. It is not the best of days. They are all shocked by the murder of Marshal Berardi and don't seem to be loquacious. I learn that two of them are factory workers, the three women are office workers, one is a pensioner, two work in for insurance companies, another for the railways, one is in the antique business and one an attorney-at-law. From what they have to say about the drawing of the jurors' names, about the reactions of their families and friends, about the bodyguards and the journalists, it seems to me that they are - at least a few of them - very worried about the repercussions of all this on their private lives, seen and experienced primarily through the judgements of other people, however. One of the two workers and the railway man say they hope

to understand by way of this trial the social and political reasons that have provoked the choices of the defendants. They ask me what I think about it, if this trial can at least be an occasion for a discussion about terrorism as a phenomenon too, and the on the reasons for its having arisen. I say that knowing the information media I think it will hardly be the case. We are interrupted by Barbaro (who is looking black because of what has happened, I imagine). As soon as he heard of the killing he telephoned his wife. During the course of the trial I learn that he is constantly in touch with his wife by telephone.

Six lawyers have accepted the charge, among them several old friends of mine. We have to find four more. I bring to Barbaro's attention the difficulty we had yesterday getting into the courtroom and ask him to do something about it. I also bring up again the question of the excessive numbers of Carabinieri in the courtroom that blocks the view of the defendants. I believe that more than ever news of the trial must be guaranteed.

The hearing opens. The six lawyers accept the commission. Two others also accept - Bianca Guidetti-Serra and Zancan - who were unsure up to the last minute since they were already working as the personal lawyers of other defendants. The assassination of Berardi has overcome all resistance. Barbaro names four others. I protest with Barbaro because they are civil lawyers and so do not offer the assurance of an adequate defense. I bring this up with him again at the exit after the adjournment of the hearing.

On the way out I stop to greet several of the lawyers appointed the day before. They are all extremely upset by the latest events. To leave that hall, that building, that atmosphere gives one a sense of liberation. In the street photographers again follow me, even into a coffee bar where I go to telephone for a taxi. Several journalists jump on me. I send them to hell when one of them asks me if now, after Berardi's killing, I am more frightened. They are so bound up in their profession that they do not realise that the significance of facts like these goes far beyond their reflections and reactions on the individual. The bar fills up with strange faces: all plain-clothes men. Giovanni and Paolo confirm this for me because they have already seen them in the courtroom.

I go to lunch with my father who, behind an appearance of calmness, seems worried and tense to me. During the whole trial he will seem to me to feel relieved only when he has me in front of his eyes. At various times of the day the fact that we are not living together seems to me to make him anxious. Then I go home to the children whom I have not seen for two days. As I arrive a neighbour "congratulates" me. I tell him ironically that this does not seem to me the happiest way of putting it. I find my husband wearing a strange expression. The children overwhelm me with hugs. Francesca seems restless to me. She comes and goes constantly, she is touchy, answers rudely and in monosyllables.

I am alone with my husband who asks me "what I think about it". Of Berardi's assassination? "Not only that," he replies, "of the threats to you". In the morning a telephone call to the ANSA [news agency, ed.] claiming credit for the killing of Berardi had added: "Watch out for Maria Adelaide Aglietta, she will be the next one. The Walter Alasia Unit." I am mute. My throat has closed up. The telephone rings. It is Giovanni who has learned about everything from my mother who called him it noon. He tells me to call her because she is shocked. He seems to be too. I tell him to hear what our comrades in Rome have to say, but he has already done so and says we will see each other later at Elena's house.

My mother is quite agitated and wants to go back to Turin. I tell her it would be pointless and anyway in cases like this the news agencies receive dozens and dozens of phoney telephone calls of this type that make claims or threats. In short, I try to calm her down and assure her that I will call her more often. She tells me to be careful. Of what? I ask my husband if the children have heard the television. He says they haven't. Whereas Alberta has gone to play in the garden, Francesca strangely has remained in her room. I go to her to see what's going on. She bursts into tears. She watched television without my husband's noticing it (and her ears are always pricked to catch my name). She is overwrought. I take her in my arms even though she is almost as tall as me and we talk for a long time.

I explain that a phone call doesn't mean anything, that it is probably the trick of an exhibitionist. In any case one mustn't get panicky. I realise that my little talk is getting a bit pedantic, but I insist on trying to make her realise that one can't run away and that if you believe in non-violence you cannot let yourself become an accomplice of the violent, above all when this would lead you away from your own conscience. Since I am sure that we are in the right, it is no problem for me to keep going.

When I leave her she is a little calmer. But anxiety is overcoming me instead. I stop on the way into town (from where we live you can see the whole city) and think that there is someone down there who has it in mind to kill me. What most upsets me is not the fact in itself but the idea that I cannot talk with him or them, the fact that they have decided on this without knowing me, my story, my motivations. It is the negation of dialogue and confrontation. And this is true violence, worse than the physical kind.

Too often, without being aware of it, we are guilty of this kind of violence in our daily relations, the kind that omits of speaking to each other - from cowardliness, presumption, timidity or laziness - of saying things out, of listening to what others have to say. This feeling of muteness and of mutilated ideas - my own and those of others - makes me feel ill. I will stay like this, in shock, all day long and on the following days. Every so often, but only rarely, physical fear will assail me, the attempt to imagine how it will happen. Will I be aware of what is happening? Will I see who is shooting me? My anguish is more for those who stay behind than for myself. How will the girls react? Will they be gripped by irrational hatred, or will they manage to overcome it and reaffirm the values I have tried to instil in them? And the non-violent party, my comrades, how will they react, they with whom I have shared the hopes for change, life choices, political struggle, hunger strikes; with whom I have oft

en shared a roof and meals; to whom I am bound by a feeling of solidarity based on facts and not words? Will they not be thrown individually into crisis, if not politically? These tormenting questions haunted me for several days and left their mark during the succeeding months as well. The fact is that I had entered directly and personally into collusion with the strategy of violence.

I have to get over it, and it isn't easy. Every day we all have clashes with violence, the violence of the regime and of the information media, the power-holders, the violence of silence; and we are often violent ourselves or connive with violence without being aware of it. May 12 in Piazza Navona comes to my mind, the faces and the weapons of the plain-clothes men, the sentence of the Constitutional Court, the RAI-TV, the meetings with men like the director of the second program TV news, Barbaro. But this violence is open not hidden and it is aimed at me, directly.

Another terrible experience dominates my thoughts in these days: suspicion. I - who by nature am incapable of being distrustful of anyone at all until given proof to the contrary - I will look suspiciously on people crossing the street, will be wary of any ringing of the doorbell, of any noise. I cannot manage to live in this way. In fact this is not living but only surviving - also for the people around me, whom I love, who love me.

When the unions, after Moro's kidnapping, will ask the workers to keep their own comrades under surveillance on the job (a "democratic" surveillance, be it well understood), I will have a very strong reaction, I who have just managed to overcome an attitude of that kind. Thus they too, participants in the folly that envelops almost all the political and institutional forces, will be for a society of spies and squealers founded on suspicion and informing, "key" values on which to model social and interpersonal relations. This collective loss of reason expressed in the declarations of big-name political leaders as well as anti-constitutional provisions imposed on the nation - will this not truly be the first real victory of the Red Brigades?

I get going and meet my comrades. I get in touch with Rome. On the initiative of Emma Bonino an appeal is publishded of the democratic women against terrorism.

"We have to say clear and loud that terror as a political weapon - the killing of Marshal Rosario Berardi, the precise threats to kill Adelaide Aglietta and the general threats against the judges of the Court of Assizes in Turin, whether made by the Red Brigades or anyone else - such weapons do not pertain to us as women or feminists, do not pertain to the movement for the liberation of all the oppressed, do not pertain to the hopes of the mass of women and men who are fighting for a society made to the measure of man. Indiscriminate violence, terrorism, setting oneself up as judge and executioner of others' lives, are measures that have always been used by authoritarian governments, by the power-holders, by the various Fascisms and Nazisms to impose their authority against the people.

For these reasons we express all our horror, disdain and condemnation of the threats made against Adelaide Aglietta who, despite our differences, represents us all as women and as democrats at this moment. To strike at Adelaide Aglietta or other women, who are facing this trial as jurors or as defense lawyers, means to strike today at the battles that everyone of us in his own person has carried on in the streets, the squares, the prisons, the courts and in the institutions; it means to become the executioner and the one who hires him of those who one wants to strike down. No less do we condemn the threats aimed at other jurors, lawyers and witnesses of the Turin trial.

For this reason we appeal to all women to rally around Adelaide Aglietta and the other women who as jurors or legal defenders are facing this trial, to defend their independence, their lives, their common hopes of liberation, which today have been put into question by not only the state, but by men who have appointed themselves to be a state, judges, avengers and executioners."

Petra Krause, Franca Rame, Giancarla Giacomini, Camilla Cederna, Carla Rodotà, Bianca Toccafondi, Paolo Pitagora, Dacia Maraini, Annamaria Mammoliti, Lisa Foa, Natalia Aspesi, Tina Lagostena Bassi, Elisabetta Rasi, Emma Bonino, Adele Faccio, Fiamma Mirestein, Lea Cicogna, Anna Proclemer, Edith Bruck, Anna Maria Mori, Ada Viani, Pia Levi, Fernanda Pivano, Lara Foletti, Bimba De Maria, Chiara Beria, Silvana Bevione, Gigliola Iannini, Serena Zoli, Anna Bartolini, Adriana Mulassano, Liliana Cavani, Livia Pomodoro, Rossanna Rossanda, Paola Fallaci, Elvira Badaracco, Gabriella Luccioli D'Amore, Movimento di Liberazione della Donna

(M.L.D.) [Women' Liberation Movement, ed.]

No newspaper except "Lotta Continua" reported this appeal. Many of my comrades phone me and Giovanni, Paolo and Elena will not leave me for the whole day. Appearances aside, they seem very alarmed to me. I talk for a long time with Gianfranco Spadaccia as try to understand what can be done. There is talk of mobilising and thus "physically" exposing all Radicals with their message of non-violence and civilisation. Even he, despite his seeming calm, strikes me as worried and he will be even more so after the defendants' ninth communique. He confirms that he will be arriving in Turin the following evening and urges me to call and let him know the reaction of the defendants in the courtroom the next morning.

Meanwhile we have talked with the ANSA, the agency which received the phone call. It seems that it is not to be taken seriously.

Towards evening the party lets me know that the police have been looking for me. I do not call back. I try to understand what's going on. What worries and frightens me most is the possible improvised action of some group like the one that broke in and occupied Radical Radio the other day. For anyone who believes with more or less conviction, in a more or less infantile way, in the armed battle and the strategy of violence, I and all other Radicals are easy targets within reach of the least organised group. And most of all there is the question of the degree to which these groups are indirectly guided and directed, of the web that has been spun in all these recent years of terrorists and police infiltrators, Carabinieri and the secret service. This is a humus that has by now been so solidified that one cannot see the limits of its possibilities, its directions and its goals. That evening my comrades insist that we change houses again.