1979

February 16, Santa Maria di Sala (VE)
Lino Sabbadin, 45 years old, butcher

The murder of Lino Sabbadin took place in Santa Maria di Sala (VE) on February 16, 1979 during the years of lead. The victim, a militant butcher of the Italian Social Movement[1], was murdered in a robbery organized by members of the group Proletari Armati per il Communismo. Before the attack on him, Lino Sabbadin in the course of a robbery against him had shot a robber, killing him. On February 16, 1979 he was in the butcher shop of his own, in Caltana, a hamlet of Santa Maria di Sala, in the province of Venice, when a commando of terrorists killed him to punish him for reacting to the previous robbery.

The murder was claimed by the left-wing terrorist formation Armed Proletari for Communism (PAC) as a sign of solidarity with the small underworld that ‘with robberies carries on the need for just reappropriation of income and rejection of work'[2]. On the same day, in Milan, another PAC nucleus killed the jeweler Pierluigi Torregiani, also previously involved in the killing of a robber. The murderers, members of the terrorist group Proletari Armati per il Comunismo were identified in Cesare Battisti and Diego Giacomin (material executor). Battisti in 1981 he escaped from Frosinone prison and took refuge in France and Mexico. After many years spent at large, partly as a fugitive, partly at large due to the application of the Mitterrand doctrine, in 2007 Battisti was arrested in Brazil and held in prison in Brasilia until June 9, 2011. After various vicissitudes, on January 12, 2019 Cesare Battisti is arrested in Bolivia and extradited to Italy.