Giuseppe Pinelli

Giuseppe "Pino" Pinelli (21 October 1928 – 15 December 1969) was an Italian railroad worker and anarchist, who died while being detained by the Polizia di Stato in 1969. Pinelli was a member of the Milan-based anarchist association named Ponte della Ghisolfa. He was also the secretary of the Italian branch of the Anarchist Black Cross. His death, believed by many to have been caused by members of the police, inspired Nobel Prize laureate Dario Fo to write his famous 1970 play titled Accidental Death of an Anarchist.

Early life

Pinelli was born in Milan to Alfredo Pinelli and Rosa Malacarne. His family was working-class in one of the poorest areas of post-World War I Milan. Although he had to work in many low-income jobs, such as waiter and warehouseman,

In 1944, Pinelli was a member of the Italian resistance movement within the Franco Brigade, and worked with a group of anarchist partisans that introduced him to libertarian thought. In 1954, he found work as a railroad fitter. In 1955, Pinelli married Licia Rognini, whom he had met at an evening class of Esperanto. On 12 December 1969, a bomb exploded at the Piazza Fontana in Milan; it killed 17 people and injured 88. Pinelli was picked up, along with other anarchists, for questioning regarding the attack. His death was widely believed to have been caused by members of the police. Police Commissioner Marcello Guida stated that "Pinelli made a feline leap toward the window, which had been left ajar due to the heat, and threw himself into the void" (subsequently, Brigadiers Vito Panessa and Carlo Mainardi no longer referred to a "feline leap", but only to the sudden opening of the casement and a leap into the void), Brigadier Pietro Mucilli said he did not see him as he threw himself from the window, Three police officers interrogating Pinelli, including Commissioner Luigi Calabresi, were put under investigation in 1971 for his death; legal proceedings concluded it was due to accidental causes, citing active illness. He was 41, and was survived by his wife and two young daughters. a sentence that was overturned in March 2004; In 1988, former Lotta Continua leader Adriano Sofri was arrested with Ovidio Bompressi and Giorgio Pietrostefani for Calabresi's murder. The charges against them were based on testimony provided 16 years later by Leonardo Marino, an ex-militant who confessed to the murder of Calabresi under order from Sofri. Claiming his innocence, Sofri was finally convicted after a highly contentious trial in 1997.

In 2022, as part of an investigative podcast about the Piazza Fontana bombing by Il Fatto Quotidiano, the then 99-years-old General Gianadelio Maletti, former number two of Servizio Informazioni Difesa, the secret service of Italy's Ministry of Defence between 1971 and 1975, who was definitively sentenced to 12 months in prison for the misdirections on the Piazza Fontana investigations and had been at large in South Africa since 1980, discussed the death of Pinelli. His death inspired the 1972 monumental mixed-media work The Funeral of the Anarchist Pinelli by Italian artist Enrico Baj. Hints of his death are also in the songs "La ballata del Pinelli" (1969, with various versions), "Asilo 'Republic'" (1980) by Vasco Rossi, and "Quarant'anni" (1993) by the Modena City Ramblers, among others.