1979

March 13, Bergamo
Giuseppe Gurrieri, 50 years old, pinned by the Carabinieri Weapon

The killing of the CC, Giuseppe Gurrieri, which took place on Tuesday 13 March at 19.20 in a courtyard in Bergamo in front of the office of Dr. Gualteroni, a doctor of the city prison, is claimed with a phone call to the newspaper L’Eco in Bergamo by the group ‘Proletarian Guerriglia’.

We report the text of the recorded phone call to the switchboard of the Bergamo newspaper:

‘Hey, this is Guerrilla. One of our armed units executed a carabiniere this evening during an action that was aimed at hitting the aguzzino of via Glene (the via del carcere. n.d.r.) Dr. Gualteroni. Keep in mind: Proletarian guerrillas. One of our armed units executed a pinned by the carabinieri who had opposed armed resistance during the action. We will have a press release tomorrow.’

An accident at work

The murder of the carabiniere represents an ‘accident at work’, a sort of inevitability in the logic of the guerrilla path. It’s like dioxin; ‘it can happen’. The dynamics of what happened are not yet entirely clear.

Let’s try to reconstruct it through the numerous eyewitnesses. Terrorists choose the rush hour of visits for action. The waiting room is overcrowded, to the point that some people have to wait for their turn in the courtyard overlooking the studio door. Among these there is the pinned Gurrieri who has accompanied his thirteen-year-old son for a few feverish days. The carabiniere is in uniform, recently left the office of the command of Bergamo, where he was doing typist duties.

The dynamics of the crime

At 19.20 two men arrive in the courtyard, young, armed, with their faces covered. The presence of a carabiniere is unexpected and causes a moment of uncertainty, then one of the two young people approaches the doned man and holds him under the gun shot, ordering him to enter the doctor’s office. The pinned Gurrieri, on the other hand, remains stationary for a few seconds, then moves his son to the side and tries to grab the terrorist’s arm. There is a short fight, then the two wriggle and the young man fires five shots. After that the escape.

The claim phone call is the work of Maurizio Lombino, ‘speaker’ of the Bergamo Autonomy. Arrested for a robbery, he repents. It is Lombino’s accusations, having dissociated the other member of the commando, Enea Guarinoni, soon arrested, that lead to the sentence to life imprisonment of Narciso Manenti, soon a refugee in Paris.