Adriano Sofri

Adriano Sofri (born August 1, 1942), Italian politician, intellectual, journalist, writer.

Activism and initial controversy

Born in Trieste, Sofri was a central figure of Italian politics in the 1960s as the leader of the autonomist movement Lotta Continua ("Continuous Struggle"').

In 1988, he was later arrested with Ovidio Bompressi and Giorgio Pietrostefani for the murder of police officer Luigi Calabresi's on May 17, 1972. The charges against them were based on testimony provided by Leonardo Marino, an ex-militant who accused himself, sixteen years later, of having being the material author of the Calabresi's murder.

Lotta Continua was a prime suspect, since Calabresi had been the objective of an extensive hate campaign because of his alleged involvement in another murder, the one of anarchist Pino Pinelli, who had been falsely accused of the December 12, 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing which marked the beginning of the strategy of tension supported by Gladio. Pinelli fell from a window of the police building in Milan in 1969 during an interrogation, according to the police because he wanted to commit suicide, but because of the many inconsistencies of the police's version, many believed him to have been murdered. In 1971, Calabresi was put under investigation for murder but charges were dropped because of lack of evidence.

Trials and imprisonment

In the long series of trials, that spanned about two decades and that alternated acquittals with sentences of guilt, the evidence against Sofri was only the confession of pentito Leonardo Marino, who is seen as unreliable by some. Sofri was sentenced to serve 22 years in the prison of Pisa. The convictions were upheld, apparently definitively, in 2000. Sofri has always maintained his innocence and continues to refuse He has become a respected columnist and pacifist intellectual, writing in Il Foglio and La Repubblica.

At the end of November, 2005, Adriano Sofri suffered health problems while in jail. He was moved to a hospital and may be free to return home after being released from the hospital. Justice Minister Roberto Castelli refused in December 2005 to grant him pardon and turn the page of the lead years. However, after the defeat of the Silvio Berlusconi government during the April 2006 election, the new Justice Minister, Clemente Mastella, announced that Sofri could be pardoned before the end of the calendar year, although he continues to refuse to ask for a pardon, saying such a request would be admission of guilt. But the Justice Minister declared that "The truth is that 34 years after the events Sofri is a very sick person to whom one can offer a spontaneously humane gesture." .

Bibliography

• Carlo Ginzburg The Judge and the Historian: Marginal Notes on a Late Twentieth-Century Miscarriage of Justice, (ISBN 1859843719)

See also

• Autonomism
• Strategy of tension

External links

• December 13, 2005 ANSA cable