ABSTRACT: During the Moro (1) trial, the constant concern is that of invalidating and passing over in silence the testimonies of Moro's family, who prove that during the kidnapping, the suspension and the seizure of the rights of Parliament and of the parties' (and in particular the DC) electoral organs was accompanied by the seizure of the rights of the members of Moro's family. Parliament was not to have access to the contents of Moro's letters, where he requested the summons of the Conference of the group-leaders, whereas at the highest levels of the State and of the Security services, men belonging to the P2 (2) were operating to organize the sidetracking of every single investigation. "At this point, even for him it is better to die". Aldo Moro was assassinated with the consent of the establishment. The D'Urso (3) case: the party of intransigence wanted a new victim. If Moro were alive, perhaps the campaign against world hunger would be closer to success.

(IL GLOBO, 22 July 1982)

("The following comment on the Moro trial was sent to us by the secretary of the Radical Party").

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The lynching which Eleonora Moro has been subjected to from many parts, and the cautious administration which the statements of her children are the object of on the part of certain newspapers are no longer tolerable. In the Moro affair, one fact is unquestionable, and should be fully revealed: The Christian Democratic Party, the Communist Party, the Republican Party and the quasi unanimity of political and parliamentary forces operated to prevent Parliament from being invested with its functions, which were suspended. Parliament was several times violently prevented from carrying out its tasks, in the same way as the statutory rights of the DC were suspended, and the rights-duties of its Direction and of its National Council (which Moro was President of) were seized.

In vain Aldo Moro asked for the summons both of the Chamber and of the DC's statutory organs. The Minister of the Interior and the Staff of the block of "national unity" had been in practice delegated by the Government to run the tragic affair.

In parallel, forces of all kinds mobilized to lynch Moro, defenceless and captive. If the Red Brigades (4) have been the infamous authors of his kidnapping and execution, others tortured him from the outside. If Moro - as is probable - was allowed to read the press during his imprisonment, he could not but see that the answer to his appeals, his letters, his warnings and his teachings was the denial of every mental capacity and of the moral strength which is necessary to every prisoner. He was brutally deprived of his dignity, by means of despicable texts (we need only think of some of the journalists of the newspaper he used to write for) and - at times - on the part of his most loyal and close followers. Moro was killed by these people first of all in his image, in his identity. In vain we tried to oppose this flood of homicidal filth; in vain we warned that the Red Brigades would have more easily assassinated a man deprived of respect and credibility.

Eleonora Moro and her children are right, and I fear they are right even in their most serious and uncorroborated suspicions. We wrote and shouted these things, day after day, with the means we had, in Parliament, on Radio Radicale, with statements to press agencies which were systematically censored.

I remember the bewilderment with which, as President of the Chamber Radical Group, I learned from the President of the Chamber Ingrao that he would not allow us to read Moro's letter, in which he too probably asked that extraordinary meeting or that vast debate which we tried to obtain at every session and every meeting of group-leaders. (Is it too much to ask the contents of that letter to be made known to the Chamber?).

In this way, the monopoly of the management of the State and of the Italian democracy was deliberately left in the hands of the Minister of the Interior, Cossiga, of the Secret Services - where members of the P2 or their equivalents occupied the highest offices - and of "safe" parts of the police. The affair of Via Gradoli is the core of interrogations which even now do not appear adequately courageous and conscious. "At this point, even for him it is better to die". This was the rumour that spread - with a theatrical crescendo - in Parliament and elsewhere since the arrival of the first letter by the President of the Christian Democratic Party.

Aldo Moro - we want to underline it - was assassinated with the contribution of those who assumed power in those weeks, preventing the constitution functioning of the State, and the democratic and statutory functioning of the parties. Such responsibilities, which are also constitutional and juridical, will one day need to be sought for and punished also by other courts of justice.

Years later, the D'Urso case was the pretext for another attempt to obtain a corpse instead of a life and a release. This time, the plotters had prepared a government consisting of members of the P2, of the group headed by Sindona (5), and of the obtuse and blind neo-Jacobins of the party of "intransigence".

The same party which today institutionalized not only the negotiation, but even the size of the prizes for the terrorists with the infamous laws on the "repentants".

With the victory we obtained alone, with the help of equally isolated journalists, with the release of D'Urso, the plans that had been prepared to overturn the Republic, as in the times of the imprisonment of Aldo Moro, were upset. Instead of a government of national salvation and in its place, we would have the explosion of the truth on Sindona, the P2, the regime. Even greater is the regret for not having been able to save Aldo Moro from the Red Brigades and from these people, just as we still cannot save millions of persons who are being exterminated by hunger in the new Holocaust.

Perhaps, if Moro were alive, even those who are about to be exterminated by hunger might have been saved.

As it is, we cannot tell.

Translator's notes

(1) Aldo Moro(1916-1978): Italian politician. Secretary of the Christian Democratic Party (1959-65), minister on several occasions, Prime Minister ('63-68), he was the mastermind of the Centre-Left policy. Foreign Minister ('69-74), Prime Minister ('74-76), President of the DC since 1976, he favoured the participation of the Communist Party in the government. He was kidnapped by the Red Brigades on 16.3.78 and found dead on 9.5.1978.

(2) P2 Masonic lodge headed by Licio Gelli. During the seventies, it was involved in a series of financial scandals and in obscure political manoeuvres. It was dissolved in 1981 at the initiative of the Government.

(3) Giovanni D'Urso: judge kidnapped on 12 December 1980 by the Red Brigades. The Radical Party was instrumental in obtaining the judge's release and to oppose that political and journalistic pressure group that wanted his death to justify the imposition of an "emergency" government formed by "technicians". On 15 January 1981, Judge D'Urso was released.

(4) Red Brigades: clandestine terrorist organization of the extreme Left which developed in Italy as of 1969. Responsible for kidnappings, the injuring and murder of magistrates, policemen and carabinieri, journalists, industrial and political leaders. In 1978 the group kidnapped and assassinated the Christian Democratic leader Aldo Moro.

(5) Michele Sindona (1920-1986): Italian financier. Between 1969 and 1974 he established a vast financial empire, to avoid the collapse of which he fled to the U.S. Implicated in a new scandal, he was arrested and convicted. He died in the prison of Voghera under mysterious circumstances.

981, Judge D'Urso was released.