1978
September 30, Naples
Claudio Miccoli, 20 years old, student
Italian poet and environmentalist, he dies following the aggression by neo-fascist thugs on the evening of September 30, 1978 in Piazza Sannazaro in Naples.
On the evening of September 30, 1978 Claudio Miccoli, regional councilor of the WWF of Campania, found himself witnessing at Piazza Sannazaro the attack of a young communist militant by a team of neo-fascists armed with sticks. Witnessing the havoc generated by the aggression, Miccoli alone tried to head towards a group of four neo-fascists trying to bring them back to reason. However, he was immediately joined by a stick blow to the head hurled by the far-right militant Ernesto Nonno, who then raged on the body of Miccoli who fell to the ground without alive, smashing his skull. That same evening Claudio Miccoli, transported to the hospital, went into a coma. He died on October 6, after expressing his willingness to donate his organs. For the murder of Claudio Miccoli, 9 defendants were stopped among the neo-fascists protagonists of the punitive expedition of September 30, 1978 in Piazza Sannazaro. At the end of the trial, which lasted 30 months, the material author of the murder, Ernesto Nonno (14 years in prison), and Pietro Romano (6 years in prison, sentenced for abnormal competition in voluntary murder) were effectively convicted. The other 7 defendants of the fascist aggression (Rosario Lasdica, Antonio Torre, Giancarlo De Marco, Davide Savino, Antonio Todaro, Antonio Appierto) in the meantime had already served their sentence or had been pardoned.
The judgment of the Court of Assizes of Naples thus establishes in a nutshell the sequence of the facts:
1) all the defendants moved from Piazza Vanvitelli (notoriously black) towards Piazza Sannazzaro (notoriously red) on September 30, the anniversary of the killing of a ‘comrade’ by a group of ‘companions’, to commemorate the mournful event with a punitive expedition; [in reality it was the anniversary of the murder of Walter Rossi, a comrade, at the hands of Cristiano Fioravanti and Alessandro Alibrandi, ed.]
2) after the wounding of Aversa, the group of squadrists scattered to make the escape easier and only for this reason did the Miccoli meet only a part of it;
3) the meeting between Miccoli and the squadristi took place a few tens of meters from the place where Aversa had been beaten;
4) the meeting took place a few minutes after this aggression (as can also be deduced from the time of hospitalization of the two);
5) the meeting took place while the squadrists tried to escape the reactions and investigations resulting from the first aggression;
6) the meeting took place while they still had with them one of the instruments with which they had attacked Aversa;
7) the meeting took place after Miccoli had expressed his intention to go and report to the police the aggression suffered by Aversa;
8) the meeting turned into aggression after the squadrists had recognized a political opponent in Miccoli;
9) the squads recognized in him an opponent when he dared to ask them for clarification on the wounding of Aversa.
The judges then describe in detail the dynamics of the murder:
It is peaceful that Lasdica, De Marco, Torre and Savino, when they reached the subway tracks, descended immediately after and met in the underpass with Claudio Miccoli, who arrived at that time together with Stella and Salemme. The deception or threat, it is not possible or interest to ascertain, allowed the first four to achieve the purpose of avoiding any clash and to run away towards the road that led them directly to the Vomero. The other three, cowardly or intimidated, then retraced their steps and slowly headed towards Piazza Sannazzaro, thus demonstrating with the facts that they had given up pursuing those purposes that had pushed them to move away from it. A few meters away, they crossed and overtook Nonno, Romano and Matacena, who crossed Piazza Piedigrotta in the opposite direction. They stopped perplexed, turned around, met the looks of the other three, who had done the same, and moved against them. After a short dialogue, Nonno brandished on 5) the meeting took place while the squadrists tried to escape the reactions and investigations resulting from the first aggression;
6) the meeting took place while they still had with them one of the instruments with which they had attacked Aversa;
7) the meeting took place after Miccoli had expressed his intention to go and report to the police the aggression suffered by Aversa;
8) the meeting turned into aggression after the squadrists had recognized a political opponent in Miccoli;
9) the squads recognized in him an opponent when he dared to ask them for clarification on the wounding of Aversa.
The judges then describe in detail the dynamics of the murder:
It is peaceful that Lasdica, De Marco, Torre and Savino, when they reached the subway tracks, descended immediately after and met in the underpass with Claudio Miccoli, who arrived at that time together with Stella and Salemme. The deception or threat, it is not possible or interest to ascertain, allowed the first four to achieve the purpose of avoiding any clash and to run away towards the road that led them directly to the Vomero. The other three, cowardly or intimidated, then retraced their steps and slowly headed towards Piazza Sannazzaro, thus demonstrating with the facts that they had given up pursuing those purposes that had pushed them to move away from it. A few meters away, they crossed and overtook Nonno, Romano and Matacena, who crossed Piazza Piedigrotta in the opposite direction. They stopped perplexed, turned around, met the looks of the other three, who had done the same, and moved against them. After a short dialogue, Nonno brandished the log he had preserved and, as evidenced by an ineccable and complete forensic medical expertise, he hit the head of the Miccoli with at least four strokes of a stick, all vibrated posteriorly, one of which broke through his cranial vault, causing a multi-fragmented and sunken fracture of the case and causing his death.