1977

November 28th, Bari
Benedetto Petrone, 18 years old, laborer

Despite the tension in Bari being high, the MSI convenes a rally by Pino Romualdi, former deputy secretary of the Republican Fascist Party, for Sunday, November 13 in Piazza Fiume. Through an appeal launched in the previous days by the Workers’ Movement for Socialism to which numerous democratic and anti-fascist parties and organizations adhere, it is possible to prevent the demonstration in Piazza dei Missini. But on November 16, the MSI holds a meeting-debate with Pino Rauti and Gianfranco Fini, although tensions have occurred in the immediately preceding days. In the week leading up to November 28, there are assaults and provocations by black patrols: a fourteen-year-old boy is hospitalized on November 26 after being attacked by a group of armed and masked men. On the afternoon of November 28, an FGCI militant is attacked by a group of missini and, on the evening of the same day, around 20:00, a new aggression is repeated: in Piazza Chiurlia stop some young communists who suddenly notice the approach of a group of missini. The communists immediately flee to the ‘Introna-Pappagallo’ section of Bari Vecchia to ask for help, while the missini disintegrate. From the section come out about fifteen militants, who are divided for a round of patrol. A small group of four people, including Benedetto Petrone, 18 and Franco Intranò, 16, is crossing Piazza Massari, heading towards Piazza Prefettura.
In front of the prefecture, at the corner of via Cairoli and Corso Vittorio Emanuele, there are about twenty missini, who, sighting the young communists, send two of them to call reinforcements in the nearby provincial federation of the MSI in via Piccinni, inside which the Youth Front, the party’s youth organization, is also based. At this point a pack of about forty neo-fascists is heading towards the small group that is still standing in Piazza Massari. From the pack, five missini are launched against the communists, three of whom begin to flee through the square and disperse in the alleys of the old city, while Benedetto Petrone, having walking problems, is left behind being joined by the aggressors who pounce on him with chains and sticks. Franco Intranò goes back to help his partner, but is thrown to the ground and wounded by a cutting weapon that penetrates his armpit, while Petrone is stabbed in the abdomen, a blow that is fatal to him and then just below his collarbone.
“The other night we were a small group of companions, we left Bari Vecchia and overlooked Corso Vittorio Emanuele. It was 8:30 p.m. or so, perhaps, and we knew that just before a fascist gang had intimidated and threatened a girl. Suddenly we saw many of them coming to meet, they came out of via Piccinni, where there is the Missina federation, we saw them with clubs spiked in hand, we ran away, I towards the upper part of the course, in the direction of Piazza Garibaldi. But then I turned around, I saw that Benedetto couldn’t make it because of the defect in his leg, he had stayed at the corner of the prefecture. One of the squads stood in front of him, hit him with a knife a first time, at the bottom: then I went back, while Benedict fell and that hit him again, I reached out my arm to grab him, and the killer injured me in the armpit.”
(Franco Intranò, wounded in the amby, by L’Unità of November 30, 1977)
Rescued a few ten minutes later, Petrone arrives at the hospital already dead, while Inranò, although wounded, manages to tell the story and describe the aggressors. In the night, six neo-fascists are stopped, while the unions join the strike proclaimed by the Metalworkers Federation of Bari.
On November 13, 1978, the trial opens for the murder of Benedetto Petrone, which sees the accused Pino Piccolo, still a fugitive and seven other missini for abetting and abetting. In the first session, Piccolo, although absent, entrusts his defense to the lawyer Franza, made available by the MSI, who tries not to attribute the material execution of the crime to Piccolo alone, trying to involve the other defendants as well. Franza’s request is rejected, but the pressures made by the families, money and influential, of the defendants on the Bari prosecutor’s office also emerge.
On November 17, Piccolo was arrested in West Berlin on charges of killing a woman during a robbery carried out together with an Italian emigrant who had managed to escape. On October 2, 1979 Piccolo is extradited. On October 27, 1980, the medical team of the judicial asylum of Reggio Emilia, in which he is locked up, declared Piccolo sano di mente at the time of the murder carried out on November 28, 1977. On March 2, 1981, after some suicide attempts, the trial of Piccolo and seven other missini began again: at the end of the debate, the Court of Assize of Bari sentenced Piccolo to twenty-two and a half years in prison, grants amnesty to two neo-fascists at the time of the minor events and sentenced the remaining one and a half years to six months. On May 22, 1982 the sentence for Piccolo will be reduced to 16 years. On August 21, 1984, Pino Piccolo committed suicide, hanging himself in his cell in Spoleto prison.
In November 2022, 45 years after the attack, the Bari Public Prosecutor’s Office requested the dismissal for prescription of the proceedings against unknown persons opened in an attempt to identify the other perpetrators, in addition to the only one who was convicted of the murder. At the end of 2017 the investigations had been reopened, following the filing in the Public Prosecutor’s Office of a defensive memorandum of the lawyer Michele Laforgia – who represents Petrone’s family – in collaboration with the Anpi, which reconstructing the facts of that evening, stressed that “the judicial history has identified a single culprit, denying any criminally relevant connection between the events of Piazza Prefettura and the climate of violence and intimidation of that period. All the defendants for reconstitution of the fascist party were eventually acquitted or acquitted.’ “But who was next to Piccolo when he chased and stabbed Benedetto Petrone to death? None of them, although qualified by the court of Assizes of Bari as co-responsible for the murder, have ever been identified. There are therefore culprits who have never been tried.’ The new investigations – coordinated by prosecutor Roberto Rossi with the substitute Grazia Errede, allowed the investigators to listen again to numerous witnesses and reconstruct the dynamics of the murder, ascertaining that the killing of Benetto Petrone was ‘the result of a pre-ordered collective action, an expression of the fascist squadrism’ put in place by a fascist group all armed with clubs and knives, and determined to the use of violence, and that therefore the death of Petrone must be charged to all the authors of the punitive expedition’. With regard to these people, however, it is no longer possible to proceed criminally because the aggravating circumstance of the futile reasons, which would have made the crime imprescriptible, has been excluded. Hence the request for filing made by the Public Prosecutor’s Office to the Gip.