2002
19 marzo, Bologna
Marco Biagi, 51 years old, university professor
Reconstruction of the events
On the evening of March 19, 2002, just after 8 p.m., Biagi rode his bike along the road that separated his home on via Valdonica from the train station, where he had disembarked a few moments earlier from the train that brought him from Modena (where he was a professor at the Faculty of Economics) back to Bologna every evening.
After getting off the train, he called his wife to let her know he was on his way home, then he got on his bike and headed towards his house. Two people were already keeping watch at the station and along the road leading to his home, alerting other accomplices of his movements.
At 8:07 p.m., a commando consisting of three other brigatists, two on a scooter and a third (the relay) on foot, waited for him in front of the entrance to his home at 14 via Valdonica. The two terrorists approached the professor wearing full-face helmets and opened fire, firing six shots in rapid succession at Biagi, before quickly fleeing the scene.
At 8:15 p.m., Biagi died in the arms of the paramedics who had arrived on the scene. It was later discovered that the weapon used in the attack was the same one used in the murder of Massimo D’Antona.
In carrying out the ambush, the brigatists were facilitated mainly by the fact that Biagi was moving without protection after his escort had been revoked a few months earlier, as testified by Cinzia Banelli, the repentant terrorist who, during the trial for the murder of the labor lawyer, stated that “If Marco Biagi had had an escort, we would not have been able to kill him. For us, two armed people already posed a problem. We were not used to real firefights. We should have been more careful, observed possible changes in the professor’s situation. We should have checked that he wasn’t alone. Instead, he arrived at the Bologna station alone.”
The claim
The claim document, signed by the New Red Brigades, was sent via email (in a 26-page file) on the same night of March 19 to 500 email addresses of various agencies and newspapers. Experts noted many similarities with the claim in the previous murder of Massimo D’Antona, and within it, they identified a certain criminal logic of the Organization that planned to strike at state men connected to a labor market restructuring context:
“On March 19, 2002 in Bologna, an armed unit of our Organization executed Marco Biagi, consultant to Labor Minister Maroni, creator and promoter of the lines and legislative formulations of a project to remodel the regulation of the exploitation of salaried labor, and to redefine both the neo-corporatist relations between the Executive, Confindustria, and the confederate Union, and the function of neo-corporatist negotiation in relation to the new model of representative democracy. A ‘governing’ democracy that has already centralized powers in the Executive and in the government majority, will now, with the reform of article V of the Constitution (called ‘federal’), see competencies and functions distributed to local political bodies within the constraints of centralized budget and monetary integration, with the aim of stabilizing the ongoing alternation between government coalitions centered on the interests of imperialist bourgeoisie, exploiting the narrowing of national production base not only as a competitive advantage in the levels of labor exploitation compared to economic systems of other countries, but as a condition to readjust the dominance of the imperialist bourgeoisie and to strengthen it against proletarian demands and tendencies towards their autonomous political and anti-state and anti-institutional development that arise from these structural conditions. With this combat action, the Red Brigades attack the political project of the dominant fraction of the native imperialist bourgeoisie, for whom the concentration of powers in the Executive, neo-corporatism, the alternation between government coalitions centered on the interests of the imperialist bourgeoisie and ‘federalism’ constitute the conditions to govern the crisis and the class conflict in this historical phase marked by economic stagnation and imperialist war.”
(New Red Brigades, Claim for the Murder of Marco Biagi)
The trial
In the first-degree trial, on June 1, 2005, the Bologna Assize Court, after twenty-two hours of deliberation, sentenced five members of the New BR to life imprisonment: Nadia Desdemona Lioce, Roberto Morandi, Marco Mezzasalma, Diana Blefari Melazzi, and Simone Boccaccini.
On December 6, 2006, the Court of Appeal confirmed life imprisonment for Diana Blefari Melazzi, Roberto Morandi, Nadia Desdemona Lioce, and Marco Mezzasalma, reducing Simone Boccaccini’s sentence to 21 years in prison, recognizing him with general extenuating circumstances.
In the third and final degree of judgment, on December 8, 2007, the fifth criminal section of the Court of Cassation in Rome confirmed the verdict issued in the second degree, making the convictions of the five responsible brigatists final, except for Nadia Desdemona Lioce, who had not appealed to the Court of Cassation.
Threats and Escort
Before his death, Marco Biagi had written five letters expressing concern about the threats he was receiving. The text of the letters, addressed to the President of the Chamber Pier Ferdinando Casini, Labor Minister Roberto Maroni, Undersecretary of Labor Maurizio Sacconi, the Prefect of Bologna, and the Director General of Confindustria Stefano Parisi, was published by the biweekly Zero in Condotta and then reported by the daily La Repubblica. In these letters, he also explained that his concern stemmed from the fact that his opponents (Sergio Cofferati in particular) were vilifying his character. Biagi also claimed that a reliable person had informed him that Cofferati had threatened him.
The Ministry of the Interior, at that time headed by Claudio Scajola, just a few months before the attack, had removed Marco Biagi’s security detail, which he had requested due to fears of attacks by left-wing extremists.
Once removed, Biagi, through letters written to various political figures, again requested it, given the ongoing threats he was receiving, but this was not granted to him. The brigatists themselves admitted that they had decided to target Biagi precisely because he was poorly protected.
On June 30, 2002, the Corriere della Sera and Il Sole 24 Ore published a conversation between the then Minister of the Interior, Claudio Scajola, and some journalists who accompanied the minister on an official visit to Cyprus.
“In Bologna they attacked Biagi, who was without protection, but if he had had protection, there would have been three dead. And then I ask you: in the negotiations of these weeks on article 18, how many people should we protect? Practically everyone.” At this point, the minister surprises those present when they tell him that Biagi was a central figure in social dialogue: protagonist of the Milan pact, co-author of the White Paper, consultant for the Ministry of Welfare, CISL, Confindustria. There is a moment of silence, Scajola turns his back, stops, takes a chance: “Don’t make me speak. Central figure Biagi? Let Maroni tell you if he was a central figure: he was a pain in the neck who wanted to renew the consulting contract.”
Due to the controversies sparked by these statements, on July 3, 2002, Scajola resigned, and he was replaced by Giuseppe Pisanu.
In May 2014, the Bologna prosecutor’s office reopened the investigation, formulating the hypothesis of homicide by omission after receiving the documents from the Rome prosecutor’s office that were examining the papers found during the search of the home of Luciano Zocchi, former head of the secretariat of then Minister of the Interior Claudio Scajola.