1983
28 January, Rome
Germana Stefanini, 56 years old, prison guard
In the early 1980s, the struggle of the Red Brigades and other supporting organizations expanded into the realm of Italian prisons due to the presence of numerous detained terrorists. In Rome, the actions began with the wounding of Giuseppina Galfo, a doctor at Rebibbia prison.
On 28 January 1983, a Roman cell of the Red Brigades, initially named Nuclei per il Potere del Proletario Armato (Nuclei for the Power of the Armed Proletariat), kidnapped Germana Stefanini, a 56-year-old guard of the women’s section. She was subjected to a trial by the “revolutionary tribunal” in her apartment in the Prenestino district of Rome to extract information about the prison organization.
Her interrogation was recorded on audiocassettes, which were later found during police investigations. The trial concluded with a death sentence for her, justified by her: “repressive function … at the expense of proletarian communist prisoners,” and was carried out with a gunshot to the back of the head. Her body was found that same evening in the trunk of a Fiat 131 parked on a street in Tiburtino.
Her murder was repudiated by 180 female inmates of the prison, who signed a document condemning it as an atrocity. It was also the subject of multiple parliamentary inquiries into prison management conditions and the security of prison staff.
For the murder, on 11 April 1987, the Rome Court of Appeal sentenced Francesco Donati, Carlo Garavaglia, and Barbara Fabrizi to life imprisonment. Donati, part of the third generation of the Red Brigades, would later also be involved in the investigations into the murder of D’Antona, which occurred 16 years later at the hands of the New Red Brigades.