1980
November 28, Sesto San Giovanni
Manfredo Mazzanti, 54 years old, Technical Director of Falck Unione
Around 8 AM on November 28, 1980, a Red Brigade commando killed Manfredo Mazzanti. The ambush on the technical director of Falck occurred near his home in Sesto San Giovanni.
The execution was carried out by one of the leaders of the Milanese Red Brigades, Vittorio Alfieri. Mazzanti’s desperate attempt to escape caused Alfieri to miss his target, so the backup man had to intervene. The perpetrators fled first on foot and then on bicycles. Later, the murder was claimed by the Red Brigades – “Walter Alasia” column.
The Red Brigades’ denial
The Red Brigades denied responsibility for the murders of both Mazzanti and Renato Briano, which occurred on November 12 and were similarly claimed. The two attacks were supposed to occur simultaneously on November 11. However, one of the cars in the commando malfunctioned, causing the “double” to be cancelled.
The denial stemmed from the fact that the two attacks had been directly “managed” by the Milanese column “Walter Alasia”, which had just been expelled from the organization after disagreements emerged at the national leadership meeting held in September at a villa on the Roman coast. They had long been questioning its strategy and highlighting the crisis. The two attacks were a way to assert their organizational and operational autonomy.
The split and the arrest of Fenzi and Moretti
The Milanese column particularly invoked the “return to the factory”. The primacy of working-class centrality in the class conflict remained the guiding star of the revolutionary initiative. Subsequent attempts at mediation and resolution of differences had no outcome. In December, with Pamphlet No. 10, the BR Executive officially announced the organizational separation of the Walter Alasia Column.
The split had among its side effects the arrest of Mario Moretti and Enrico Fenzi. In fact, the two were sent a few months later to rebuild the Milanese column. Deprived of organizational support, they ended up relying on a small criminal blackmailed by law enforcement, who trapped them.
His conviction was a photograph published in the factory newspaper. Easier to identify, Manfredo Mazzanti was chosen by the BR – Walter Alasia column as an “enemy to be hit”, within a group of Falck executives. Mazzanti, originally from Tuscany, a 54-year-old engineer specializing in quality, was head of the Unione plant in Sesto San Giovanni.
Like every morning, on November 28, 1980, he said goodbye to his wife Adele and his son Mario, and at 7:30 AM, he left home for work. First, he passed by the newsstand on the corner to buy newspapers. Two brigadists approached him and shot him, shouting “We have killed a servant of the bosses” before fleeing on foot and then by bicycle. Mazzanti, with the newspapers under his arm, fell on the asphalt on Via Orseolo.