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 Contending Parties Have The Word

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.

(<> - Adelaide Aglietta - Preface by Leonardo Sciascia - Milano Libri Edizioni - February 1979)

TRAGEDY IN THE COUNTRY, ILLEGALITY IN PARLIAMENT, BOREDOM IN THE COURTROOM

Monday, April 10. We have reached the point of hearing the damaged parties. For some time I have been calm and serene again in comparison to the fears and suspicions I had at the beginning of the trial. On the other hand, the moments in which I reject the physical aspect of the courtroom and its atmosphere are more and more frequent. When I leave it I have constantly greater difficulties in my relationship with my party comrades whom I feel are far from the realities of the trial.

I feel the interminable farce of the witnesses' examinations to be an insult to the intelligence and it mortifies me. Dozens of people parade in front of us to confirm that their ID cards, or driver's licenses, or passports, or automobiles really were stolen - facts which have already been proven and do nothing to throw light on who committed the crimes. The only way for occupying this interminable time is to try to get nearer to the defendants, to understand the choices they made in the light of their pasts, to study their personalities attentively. I try to find in their almost fixed glances the clue to their truer, inner life. Nadia Mantovani interests me in particular because her behaviour has put into relief an entirely feminine form of otherness. She seems more open and reachable even when, with the end of the trial nearing, the other defendants seem more worn out. There appears a serenity and, perhaps, a deep optimism on her often smiling face which makes an impression of solidity.

During an intermission in the hearing I enter the jurors' room by chance and find them intent on cutting a cake with a candle in it. "A month has passed since the trial began!" someone exclaims when seeing my astonished and questioning face, and they ask me to stay. Maybe I am not very sociable, but I can't really manage to participate in the general enthusiasm and I leave.

Tuesday, April 11. On arriving at the Lamarmora barracks, I get the feeling that something's in the air. The Carabinieri at the entrance don't greet me with the usual cordiality and their faces are drawn and serious. I learn that Lorenzo Cotugo has been killed, a warden of the Turin prison, as he was leaving his house. One of the killers, Cristoforo Piancone, was wounded in turn by the warden who thus signed his death warrant: the intention of the killers was to wound him in the legs, as we will learn from a communique released by the BR at the same time as the attack, but when he returned the fire they shot again and killed him. He was married with children. We will never manage to put an end to all this. For two months Italian life has been covered by this cloud of death.

The hearing opens in an even more sombre atmosphere than usual. Labate testifies, the union man who was kidnapped by the BR, interrogated and released the same morning with a completely shaved head and tied to a column in Corso Tazzoli. He tells his story in low tones. He has nothing to add to the testimony he gave during the inquiry. I begin to wonder if after that episode he continued working in the union, if he is still a Fascist, if anything has changed in his life and to what degree. The three defendants present seem to have absolutely nothing to do with this affair. Only when the lawyer Guidetti-Serra requests that the defendants be asked if they have any questions or any objections to make, Bonavita intervenes saying that they are only observers.

At the back of the courtroom I stop to hear if there is anything new. No, there is only the feeling of discomfort and resignation.

I make my way slowly home. I phone the parliamentary group in Rome. This week the clash on abortion has begun in Parliament. Are deputies are using obstructionist tactics and have gone for three days without eating or sleeping. The distance, my being tied up with the trial, the newspaper lynching of our four deputies, the fact of never seeing - ever - any of our declarations published, all gives me a terrible and obvious feeling of impotence. There, in the Parliament, are Adele [Facio] and Emma [Bonino]; after all the battles, after imprisonment, after the hundreds of discourses and the talks to women, now they are witnessing the sell-out of the hopes for liberty, the dignity of women, and they are watching a new law reaffirm the violence of clandestine abortion.

I join my comrades in going to protest outside the headquarters of the PCI [Communists] and the PSI [Socialists]. Once again I find myself in disagreement with Magnani-Noya who justifies her position to women by saying that "the law is no good because the Radical deputies have blocked with violence any serious parliamentary debate that might have improved it". This time I am stunned by the bad faith of the Socialist deputy who knows very well that the law is the result of bartering among the DC, PCI and PSI and signed outside a Parliament that by now has been totally deprived of its powers and its functions. And who stopped her from disassociating herself from her party's line and participating in the debate in the Chamber?

On Radical Radio I hear the speeches of Adele [Facio], Emma [Bonino], Marco [Pannella] and Mauro [Mellini]. What astonishes me, both in the discussion as well as in the illustration of the hundreds of amendments presented, is the precision of their speeches, all of them full of considerations and references pertinent to the subjects discussed from time to time. This Radical obstructionism has nothing to do with the image of it presented in the press, nor with the filibustering that was practised in the British House of Commons in the past, where this kind of parliamentary battle was invented (with the deputies intent on reading, imperturbably, for hours and hours, the Encyclopedia Britannica or in discussing things that had no direct connection with matter at hand). In listening to the Radical deputies one has, instead, the distinct impression that their weariness is caused by the extreme effort to force a dialogue on a majority that is deaf to all arguments, to all proposals, even the most reasonable.

And at the same time it is clear that they put into this effort the legacy of a legislative competence and a knowledge acquired in seven years of struggle which they and the whole party has waged throughout the country.

Adele's voice reaches me by way of Radical Radio again, breaking with tears due to the vote against the law: it expresses all the anxiety and sadness of the girl minors condemned to the hands of the midwives and medical butchers, of women condemned to the physical and psychological violence of clandestine abortions - a new class massacre in the name of an emergency and of "Socialism".

The abortion issue distracts me during the trial, perhaps because in all my political experience it is the one that I have been most involved in: the collection of signatures for the referendum on abortion was the action that sanctioned my definitive entrance into the party. For a few days I once again feel near to the party and to my world. Then, after the "defeat" of the Radical deputies - which nevertheless had great significance as an exposé and forced everyone to lay his cards on the table - I am obliged to return to the sphere of the trial.

Thursday, April 13. "Today Amerio is coming to testify", the presiding judge informs me as I arrive at the courthouse while I start as always to look through my newspapers. In particular I leaf through the <> and as always I leave aside <>. While the whims and eccentricities of Sossi (1) have begun, a positive factor is that the others, the victims of the most serious crimes, which is to say the kidnappings, come to testify and do not back out.

In this case too, as on the occasion of Labate's testimony, we learn nothing more than what we already knew from the questioning during the inquiry, immediately after his release from kidnapping.

By kidnapping and interrogating Amerio, the BR tried to shed light on the criteria that determined the firing and hiring and to learn who the people in the various divisions of iat were who served as go-betweens and informers among the workers. The answers that Amerio gives during the hearing reveal again his fear, the shock he underwent and his desire to leave the entire affair behind him. His testimony regarding the week he spent in captivity is dry: no, he was not subjected to physical violence, he was interrogated, he was never threatened, he was fed regularly. One would almost think that he had no frightening memory from those days except for anxiety about what his fate was going to be.

During an identification of voices that took place afterwards, Amerio identified the voice of Curcio, he confirms in the courtroom, as the voice "most resembling" that of his interrogator. But Amerio's deposition ends without any intervention on the part of the defendants.

I go to get Francesca and Alberta at school and stay with them during lunch. The bad days for the children are past and everything has returned to normal, apparently at least, even though they keep careful track of all my movements, my schedule, my appearances or my telephone calls, and are prompt in making me explain possible distractions or absences.

Monday, April 17. While the whole country is gripped by fear about the Red Brigades communique of the day before announcing Moro's death sentence, the trial proceeds normally. At the Lamarmora barracks I find the atmosphere tense as always when there are external facts that could reflect on the trial.

The hearing opens with the public prosecutor's request for fixing a hearing at the home of Sossi, who continues to say it is impossible for him to attend the trial. Semeria declares in the name of the defendants that, in that case, they also want to go to Genoa to attend the hearing: they have questions to ask. I can't help smiling: I agree with this, as do some of the lawyers for the defense.

Sogno appears on the witness stand with his aquiline profile and his arrogant behaviour. Throughout his deposition I think I would prefer to hear him speak of the "golpe bianco" (bloodless coup), the plan to install a presidential republic in Italy, of the ties and the cover he has had. I remember the astonishment his incrimination caused in Turin and how that trial too has been adulterated over the years.

Sogno (2) makes a very brief deposition. The presiding judge is about to dismiss him when Franceschini stands up and asks what relations there were between between the Centre of Democratic Resistance and Beria d'Argentine, a letter from whom was found during their "search". In that letter the magistrate said that he was in agreement with the goals of an assembly called for March '74 even if his position did not allow him to intervene. Barbaro [the presiding judge] quickly says that the question is not pertinent. His behaviour strikes me as a little hasty and unjustified. There is a request on the part of the public prosecutor and several lawyers for a reading of the document to which Franceschini has alluded. The court retires. The presiding judge, without allowing discussion, orders the dismissal of the witness. It seems incredible to me and I protest. Several jurors are annoyed. Curcio stands up and summarises the contents of the document: he speaks of Sogno's project, of the date for the divorce refe

rendum, names Leoni, Fanfani and Taviani. The presiding judge interrupts him but Curcio continues. Barbaro definitively dismisses Sogno and orders Curcio to be expelled. Curcio protests, says that the court is Fascist and that the sentence of Moro also goes for the presiding judge. Moschella intervenes and asks for the expulsion of the defendant for the threats proffered to the judge.

The lawyer Guiso asks that the documents cited by Curcio be procured for the trial documents and Franceschini intervenes raising a new problem: after having reached the judge Violante for the trial of Sogno, the famous letter disappeared. Other lawyers and the public prosecutor join Guiso's request and asking for a hearing of Violante. This time a discussion of the request is allowed. Curcio is re-admitted into the courtroom, the Sogno correspondence is to be procured, the court subpoenas Violante and reserves the right to call back Sogno for further testimony.

But the next day the following article appears in <> (3): "Arrogantly the brigadiers claim the right to interrogate the witnesses". Zeal and servility make them forget that our laws, even the 1930 ones, provide for the right of the defendants to question the witnesses and the motives for the break-in at the CRD are indispensable elements for the decision of the jury.

Despite the fact that Violante's testimony is subsequently heard, the letters that disappeared from the correspondence seized from Curcio and Franceschini at the time of their arrest will never be found. Sogno's second testimony naturally will not serve to clear up anything because he will find the legal loophole of being a defendant in another trial and thus not obliged to say anything that can hurt his position. But if Sogno has the right to be silent, he certainly does not have the right to insult the court for its presumed weakness in the face of the arrogance of the defendants and to express strong opinions of them. I urge the presiding judge to make him shut up. Inasmuch as he goes on, I try to catch the attorneys' eyes to see if they are reacting. I get up and head for the exit. At the same time the attorney Guidetti-Serra stands up and asks the judge to make the witness be silent since he is only expressing personal opinions and requests that his remarks be removed from the trial records. The pr

esiding judge says he agrees. Of course, he has to! I go back to my place. At no other time did I feel so uneasy about not being able to intervene except indirectly.

Tuesday, April 18. The hon. Mr. Costamagna makes his deposition as the injured party of the break-in at the Don Sturzo Centre. (**) With this testimony another subject comes up which will never be cleared up in the course of the trial: the mystery of a letter Prof. Calderon, Don Sturzo's secretary, sent to the centre during the break-in of the Brigades but which was never found together with the other material discovered in their hide-outs. Instead it reappeared in photocopy in the hands of magistrate Guariniello when he called in the hon. Mr. Costamagna a month later. The latter claims that the magistrate did not explain his reasons for calling him in and refused to explain where the photocopy in his possession came from. Later we will learn from magistrate Guariniello that the famous letter was found during a search in the house of Cavallo who said it had been entrusted to him for translation into English by a person he did not name however. At this point everything is totally obscure: all we know is

that the letter has gone around in strange ways from the Don Sturzo Centre to the BR and then in photocopy to Cavallo. The original was never again found. The Hon. Mr. Costamagna [DC deputy of the far right, ed.] is right when he calls the affair absurd and incredible.

Thursday, April 20. Two days ago the thriller of Lago della Duchessa began and the Via Gradoli "hide-out". Later one will learn that it would have been possible to discover Via Gradoli much earlier. While the police literally get lost searching in the Abruzzo and the country has almost ceased to react to the alternation of dramatic news reports, in the Turin courtroom there continues the parade of dozens of witnesses who don't know anything, haven't seen anything, or, if they have, don't remember what or haven't recognised anyone. I protest to Barbaro a number of times that the useless witnesses should be discarded. He answers that the public prosecutor's list of witnesses has to be respected in its entirety. I know that his relations with Moschella are not of the most affable and so one waits.

The boredom and the nervousness increase. Everyone thinks of the sacrifices it costs him to attend the hearings and feels that he is being made a fool of, or, in any case, impelled to protest that things be hurried up.

The only one who appears always calm and imperturbable is the auxiliary judge, Mitola. There has not been a moment during the trial when he has lost his aloofness either in his personal relations with us, or with regard to the events in the trial and on the outside. This does not mean that there have not been moments when some hidden human dimension of his, full of irony, has not come out. Mitola is rigorously bound to "his" professional ethic which makes him reject (but in a different way from Barbaro) any attempt at interference in the trial. He is extremely rigid in interpreting, almost literally, the articles of the penal code even while always being interested in any other point of view and available for discussion. Of all the jurors, he has been the most attentive to the details of the closing harangues. With regard to personal danger he has an almost fatalistic attitude. The risk exists for him, but it is something implicit in his choice of profession. During the last days, before the end of the

debate, I hear him say sarcastically: "My dear Mr. President [of the court, presiding judge], if they want to block the trial at this point, they can get you or they can get me...".

Scanning the newspapers I notice several articles announcing that Barbaro's bodyguard has been removed. My mouth drops open: It seems to me something unheard of, for which I can find no logical explanation unless it is some kind of reprisal. In the corridors of the Lamarmora barracks everyone is talking - with indignation - about what has happened. I come across Barbaro and make an attempt at learning something more: "You must have really stepped on somebody's toes!" Barbaro lets out a bitter laugh and says nothing.

Today Marco Boato comes to testify. He is a leader of Lotta Continua (4) and has been educated, like the defendants, in the Sociology Department of the University of Trent. His testimony is long and detailed and contributes to clarifying Pisetta's role in the circles of the BR. Pisetta, who is the defendant in this trial based on art.306, was one of the first infiltrators of the SID (5) into the leftist groups and particularly into the BR. After having spent several months in prison, when he came out he made use of the trust he had won to take up his "work" again among the comrades. In the summer of '74 his by now famous memoir on the BR explodes like a bomb: it is the first historical document on the life of the organisation. Later Pisetta will affirm that he was not the material planner, but had only lent his name to this SID operation which ended by trapping some one hundred Italian leftists. He claims that he betrayed [the BR] the first time in order to get out of prison and afterwards from fear.

This brings to my mind the deposition of Allegra, the director of the Milan political office, who declared he had never known Pisetta if not when he was arrested for the second time in Milan, and that he had not been told about the memoir's existence (which was circulated among all Italian police headquarters). Once again the shadow of the secret services fell over the life of the left wing in those years, the dark areas of which one doesn't manage to shed light on, the responsible people that one does not manage to identify, the trials that are watered-down and put into the hands (yes, those especially) of state terrorism.

At the end of Marco Boato's testimony he stays on in the courtroom among the lawyers to transmit an appeal during an interval in the hearing - having had the presiding judge's consent - to Curcio for the release of Moro in the name of the common causes of '68, before their diverging choices divided them. The country is plunging into a critical situation from which apparently there is no return: the maimings, the killings, the tragic development of the Moro case with the demands for exchanges not yet precisely defined, the messages of the DC president, the stiffening of a political class that is as intransigent on questions of principle as it is flexible about its anti-Constitutional actions, the Pope's message, the chronic inertia of the investigations that continually lead to nothing

weigh on a country that is apparently resigned, indifferent, without the capacity to react. Perhaps this time they have really succeeded in completely suffocating the hopes and the will to participate that in these years have been manifested in civil society.

The anti-terrorism decree passes in the Senate without provoking any reaction: besides the provisions I have already mentioned an article is added that provides for not re-admitting the defendants into the courtroom after two expulsions. It is the third special law decreed ad hoc for this trial with the proceedings already underway. Not only does this injure the rights of the defense as sanctioned by the Constitution, in allowing a trial to take place in the defendants' involuntary absence and thus denying them the right to cross-examination, but legal dispositions are approved which are, in effect, retroactive. In the Chamber we announce that we will take obstructionist action. For fear that this will cause the time to expire for the decree to become a law, the government will have to call for a vote of confidence. The juror with whom I formed a kind of friendship asks me: "What are we still here for? What hopes can you still have?" He is slowly falling into a situation of apathy and abulia. He is con

templating resigning from the jury.

At the Chamber the discussion must start on the Reale law modification on which one of the referendums depends.

With a surprise move the majority coalition, in expectation of new obstructions by the Radicals, establishes that the new law should be discussed and approved in the Justice Commission of the legislature. That would mean, first of all, no news coverage of the commission's work (in fact, journalists cannot be present at the commission's debates) and that the law would not be passed to the Chamber. In short, the law would be approved in the shadows of the "Palazzo" (6) and far removed from public opinion. Emma's reaction is very hard: "It is an unheard of and unacceptable proposition. I can find no other words than those of Spagnoli in opposing the first Reale law on April 23, 1975 when it was presented for the vote: <> ". The PCI has learned the methods of power quickly! Pannella arranges

to be expelled at night from the Commission chamber: the fact is reported but not the ideas and the motivations of the deputy.

The Radicals are practising obstruction: their reasons for this are not reported. The only thing known is that along with the Radicals the MSI [neo-Fascists] are also using obstructionist tactics and their reasons are given ample coverage. The referendums are approaching and the lynching has begun. But the majority coalition has made wrong calculations: the obstructionism in the Commission turns out to be more effective than that in the Chamber. The discussions with the other jurors on the referendums, on the modified Reale law, on the Radicals-Fascists, are on the order of the day and are very heated. Some lawyers I have known for years, among whom many are certainly in favour of the Reale law referendum, ask me this question: "In this situation may obstructionism on the Reale law not turn out to be counterproductive? If by chance it comes to a referendum it would be a crushing defeat and so a step backwards". These are signs that make me feel very uncomfortable. I ask myself for the nth time who is pu

lling the strings of the BR. But if even the most reasonable people are resigned and allow themselves to be crushed by discouragement, doesn't that mean that we are already in a situation of no return, the annulment of all hope, of the total domination by grey conformity?

The tedious and oppressive parade of witnesses continues. At times my head droops onto my shoulder and sleep threatens to overcome me. At night I go to bed very late because I spend the night with my comrades arranging the political campaign that is to begin May 12. While sleepiness in the courtroom increases, sociability outside increases: we fill the intervals by discussing a bit of everything. In these days we pose the question of the "exchanges" [of prisoners]: there is the worry that it can be unloaded onto this jury. No one seems to be certain of anything and I would say there is a general confusion, the road to be travelled still appears irremediably long and dark to most of us. Here too resignation and discouragement are at the fore. In the midst of all this the bustling little figure of Guiso stands out with his always a bit mysterious way of saying and not saying anything, appearing and disappearing, the attitudes ranging from the presumptuous to the submissive, often taken aside in long conve

rsations with the presiding judge. Certainly an anomalous figure in the midst of the composed and almost static atmosphere of the Turin court. Towards the end of the trial he will confide to me his uneasiness and also his fears for the criticisms, insinuations and also the veiled accusations that have been directed at him by the press - and not only the press. ----------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) A judge who had been kidnapped by the Red Brigades.

2) Edgardo Sogno, a Christian Democratic ex partisan, ambassador and anti-Communist.

3) The Fiat-owned Turin daily.

4) Lotta Continua (Continuous Struggle) A far-left wing party and its official newspaper of the same name.

5) SID - Servizio Informazione Difesa or Military Defense Service.

6) A common journalistic term used to describe the political powers in their negative aspects, especially in their insensitivity to the public welfare.