1999
Massimo D’Antona, 51 years old, university professor
The murder
It was just past 8:00 in the morning on May 20, 1999, when Professor Massimo D’Antona, a consultant for the Ministry of Labour, was preparing to leave his home at via Salaria, near via Po, in Rome, to go to work at his studio located a short distance from his apartment. As he passed the intersection with via Adda, near a billboard that blocked him from view from the street, around 8:13, the professor was stopped by a commando of brigatists formed by Mario Galesi and Nadia Desdemona Lioce, who had been hiding inside a van parked on the side of the road since 5:30 in the morning.
For them, the operation had begun four days earlier with the parking of vehicles: two Nissan vans parked on via Salaria, two scooters for the escape of the operational team, and bicycles for the relays. The two of them, in the middle, monitored the street through a small hole made through the white paint covering the glass. Fake mustaches, a container for urine, and bags containing weapons. But they were not alone. Another three members of the operational group (the so-called relays) had already reached their designated positions, all equipped with fake mobile phones, radios, fingertip patches to avoid leaving fingerprints, caps with visors, and sunglasses.
Meanwhile, Professor D’Antona had already started walking along the sidewalk that runs alongside Villa Albani and had almost covered most of the last one hundred and thirty steps that separated him from the last moments of his life. An eyewitness to the murder, during the trial, reconstructed those few seconds: “I was on the same sidewalk where D’Antona was walking. I saw a man and a woman who were waiting for someone and then spoke to this person. I continued on. I crossed via Adda, but after a few meters, I heard dull shots. I turned to look and saw a ‘long gun’ and then the man who kept shooting while the other man was already on the ground.”
According to the trial deposition of the repentant Cinzia Banelli, the man who continued to shoot was Mario Galesi, armed with a semi-automatic pistol caliber 9×19 without a silencer, firing at D’Antona, emptying all 9 rounds of the magazine and delivering the coup de grace to the heart.
After completing the action, the two of them left the scene of the crime: the man towards via Basento, where he rode a “50” motorbike, while the woman continued to walk along via Salaria, crossing paths with a second eyewitness who described her as: “short and straight dark brown hair, combed with a middle parting, large rather dark eyes, and a chubby face.” Rescue workers who arrived shortly after on the scene transported D’Antona to the Umberto I Polyclinic where, at 9:30, the doctor declared him dead.
The claim
A few hours after the ambush, in a 14-page document printed front and back, complete with a five-pointed star and signed Nuove Brigate Rosse, the claim came.
In contrast to the claim patterns used by the brigatists in the years of lead, in addition to the disappearance of the classic wording SIM (Imperialist State of Multinationals), the ideological expression coined by the BRs, replaced by “International Bourgeoisie,” a clear deterioration in style and literary quality and greater tortuosity in expression is evident. Here too, as in the Biagi murder case, there is a certain criminal logic of the Organization that planned to target state men and key figures, linked to a context of labor market restructuring:
“On May 20, 1999, in Rome, the Red Brigades for the Construction of the Combatant Party struck Massimo D’Antona, legislative advisor to Minister of Labour Bassolino and representative of the Executive at the ‘Pact for Employment and Development’ permanent table. With this offensive, the Red Brigades for the Construction of the Combatant Communist Party resume the combat initiative, intervening in the central nodes of the long-term class war, for the conquest of political power and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, attacking the neo-corporatist political project of the ‘Pact for Employment and Development,’ as a central aspect in the class/State contradiction, a pivot on which the dominant political balance intends to proceed in implementing a process of overall economic-social restructuring and adaptation of forms of state domination, the internal political base of the renewed role of Italy in the central policies of imperialism.”
The trial
First instance
For the murder of the labor lawyer, 17 people are indicted: ten of them for armed gang and the other seven for armed gang and murder. The first trial concludes on March 1, 2005, when judge Luisanna Figliolia sentences Laura Proietti to life imprisonment and Cinzia Banelli to twenty years in prison, both judged with an abbreviated trial.
On July 8, 2005, after 32 hours of deliberation, the Rome Court of Assizes, presided over by Marco D’Andria, issues the verdict for the other brigatists on trial and sentences Nadia Desdemona Lioce, Roberto Morandi, and Marco Mezzasalma to life imprisonment.
Lesser penalties, however, for the other members, all acquitted of the charge of complicity in murder and held responsible only for subversive association: nine years for Paolo Broccatelli, nine years and six months for Diana Blefari Melazzi, four years and eight months for Federica Saraceni, five years for Simone Boccaccini, five years and six months for Bruno Di Giovannangelo, and for all the so-called irreducible detainees who had claimed responsibility for the murder from the Trani prison: Michele Mazzei, Antonino Fosso, Francesco Donati, and Franco Galloni.
Alessandro Costa, Roberto Badel, and brothers Fabio and Maurizio Viscido, on the other hand, are acquitted.
Appeal
The second Court of Appeals of Rome, in its two sentences on June 1 and June 28, 2006, confirms life sentences for Nadia Desdemona Lioce, Roberto Morandi, Marco Mezzasalma, and reduces the sentences for Laura Proietti (to twenty years) and repentant Cinzia Banelli (to twelve years).
The first-degree sentence is overturned for Federica Saraceni, who, acquitted in the first instance of complicity in murder, is instead judged separately and sentenced to twenty-one years and six months by the second Court of Appeals on April 4, 2008, holding her responsible for this particular crime.
Alessandro Costa and Roberto Badel are definitively acquitted, along with all the irreducibles from the Trani prison: Michele Mazzei, Antonino Fosso, Francesco Donati, and Franco Galloni.
The Court of Cassation
In the final judgment on June 28, 2007, the Court of Cassation substantially confirms the sentences of the Court of Appeals: life imprisonment for Morandi, Mezzasalma, and Lioce, and acquittal for the 4 irreducibles Fosso, Donati, Galloni, and Mazzei, for whom the request for a new trial is rejected.
The definitive sentences are also confirmed for Federica Saraceni (twenty-one years and six months), Laura Proietti (twenty years), Cinzia Banelli (twelve years), Simone Boccaccini (five years and eight months), Bruno Di Giovannangelo (five years and six months), and Paolo Broccatelli (nine years), with the judges reducing the sentence for Diana Blefari Melazzi (from nine years to seven years and six months).
The D’Antona murder reopens the season of Red Brigades murders, which, eleven years after the last assassination, that of Roberto Ruffilli, return to public attention with a new symbol, the New Red Brigades, with which they resume armed struggle trying to stop the so-called neo-corporatist political project of the Employment Pacts, striking key figures linked to the political context of labor market restructuring.
The goal pursued is always, as with the historic BRs, that of the conquest of political power and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, through the annihilation of the dominance of imperialist bourgeoisie.
Following the D’Antona murder, the assassinations of labor lawyer Marco Biagi and the firefight with law enforcement on the Rome-Florence train on March 2, 2003, followed, costing the life of PolFer superintendent Emanuele Petri, brigatist Mario Galesi, and the subsequent capture of the other brigatist Nadia Desdemona Lioce.
Following that arrest and, above all, from the analysis of her handheld computer, investigators traced several documents with potential targets to strike, strategic resolutions, and several other pieces of evidence connecting the two terrorists with the New BR symbol and, consequently, with the murders of D’Antona and Biagi.