1979
July 18, Turin
Carmine Civitate, 38 years old, Business Owner
The shootout at the Bar dell’Angelo was a violent episode during the “Years of Lead” that occurred in Turin on February 28, 1979, inside a bar on Via Paolo Veronese, near Piazza Stampalia. In the sudden gunfight between some police officers, who were called to the premises by the bar owner, and two members of the terrorist group Prima Linea, one policeman was injured while Matteo Caggegi and Barbara Azzaroni, two militants of the organization present in the bar, were killed. The terrorists were in the bar to prepare an ambush for the communist councilor Michele Zaffino, who was involved in the PCI project to engage the citizens of Turin in the fight against terrorism by distributing questionnaires.
The circumstances of the shootout, the alleged denunciation by the bar owner, and the friendship ties among Prima Linea militants triggered a series of subsequent violent episodes, such as the failed retaliatory ambush at the bottle shop on Via Millio and the mistaken killing of the Bar dell’Angelo owner, Carmine Civitate, who was actually not involved.
(…) The bloodshed at the Bar dell’Angelo caused great emotion in the city of Turin, and newspapers and television gave extensive coverage to the news. In particular, images and audiovisual footage of the bar and the bodies of the two terrorists lying on the ground, partially undressed, hastily covered with part of their clothing, barefoot with their boots placed next to the bodies, were circulated. The violent deaths of Caggegi and Azzaroni sparked very intense emotional reactions in the young far-left base of the movement, close to the positions of armed struggle, along with demands for reprisals and military responses. At Barbara Azzaroni’s funeral in Bologna, university students participated en masse in an atmosphere of emotion, tension, strong participation, and extremist revolutionary calls.
In reality, the events at the Bar dell’Angelo triggered a sequence of further bloodshed caused by the violent reaction of the Prima Linea members in Turin who, emotionally involved in the events, acted entirely recklessly and irrationally. On March 9, 1979, a commando of five men, led by Maurice Bignami, carried out the tragic ambush in Via Millio against a police patrol, resulting in injuries on both sides and the death of a young man, Emanuele Iurilli, who was returning home from school, which was located near the Bar dell’Angelo.
On July 18, 1979, still eager for revenge, the Prima Linea militants organized an ambush inside the Bar dell’Angelo against the owner of the establishment, Carmine Civitate, who was mistakenly believed, based on confused and unreliable information, to be the informant who alerted the police and allowed Caggegi and Azzaroni to be caught off guard. Civitate was killed by Bignami and Marco Donat-Cattin. Only later did the terrorists learn of the complete innocence of the bar owner in the matter: during the attack, the unfortunate bartender, who had taken over the bar just a couple of weeks earlier, was sleeping in the back, and it was the tobacco shop owner nearby who alerted the authorities after noticing the four young people in the Fiat 128. He became suspicious when Azzaroni and Caggegi asked him to buy carnival masks on a day that marked the beginning of Lent.
The series of bloodshed incidents related to the Bar dell’Angelo tragically exemplified the reality of the large northern Italian cities during the so-called “widespread terrorism” years: a long series of events characterized by fury and emotion, a great deal of violence not only with ideological backgrounds, political adventurism, a culture of reprisal and vigilantism, the irrationality and ideological confusion of the young base close to the positions of armed struggle. The events at the Bar dell’Angelo also marked the beginning of the end of the Prima Linea organization, torn apart by internal conflicts, disintegrated by the effective activity of law enforcement and the phenomenon of turning informants, degenerating into a series of useless and bloody military actions that were increasingly violent and irrational.