Guido Calvi I Was Afraid Only Once When Licio Gelli Mentioned My Name Piazza Fontana The Truth Affos

Guido Calvi Eighty-two Years Old

The lawyer of the Italian left Three legislatures in the Senate, one mandate in the Csm.

But in his previous life there is more What did he dream of doing when he grew up? "The university professor.

I liked studying " And why did he become a lawyer? "By pure chance".

Like by pure chance? "In the summer of 1969 I received a phone call from a lawyer friend, Nicola Lombardi, who asked me to go and see some anarchists from the Circolo 22 marzo who were on hunger strike in Regina Coeli They were his clients and he was not could join them in prison".

What was he doing at that moment? "I had just started teaching philosophy of law at the university in Camerino" How old was he? "Twentynine.

So I met these anarchists in the parlor from whom I shared political ideas but not the passion for life We chatted affably, I reported to Lombardi and I went back to teaching".

And instead? "In December 1969 the bomb exploded in Piazza Fontana On the evening of December 15, an official from the Rome police station called me and informed me that the anarchist Pietro Valpreda, suspected of having planted the bomb at the Banca dell'Agricoltura in Milan, had appointed me as a defense lawyer.

" Was he entitled to do so? "Is he what I explained to the official "Look, I've never practiced the profession!".

He insisted: "You must go to the Palazzaccio immediately!" Was Valpreda one of the anarchists he had visited in prison? "Yes, he remembered me and mentioned me He was 36 years old and was a dancer".

And so he gave in? "Yes, even if the next day I would have had to explain Leibniz to my students" Who was the judge who questioned Valpreda? "Vittorio Occorsio, who in 1976 would have been murdered by terrorists blacks.

A gentleman He wanted to make a comparison between Valpreda and the witness who accused him, the taxi driver Cornelio Rolandi.

He claimed to have accompanied him to the bank "Had Rolandi recognized him?" Not exactly.

The commissioner of Milan Marcello Guida had shown him a photo and had told him that this was Valpreda " Did he say the same thing to you too? "Yes, after I pressed him with the typical arrogance of her age.

Occorsio recorded everything with absolute fidelity And why didn't they release him? Because the police station persisted with its version.

And in the meantime, a press campaign was mounted which portrayed Valpreda as "the monster" Even on Tg1 they defined him like this".

Why did he continue to be a lawyer? "Because I wanted to demonstrate that the investigators had made a gigantic blunder" What was the trial like? "Tormented.

Milan, with a scandalous decision, was declared a "non-serene" venue and the trial transferred to Catanzaro The powerful of the time paraded, Mariano Rumor, Giulio Andreotti.

Indro Montanelli was also heard as a witness" Wasn't he inexperienced for such a test? "I remember that my friend Ruggero Zangrandi, the author of The long journey through fascism, gave me this advice: "Look only one step ahead of you" .

I threw myself into the procedural documents" Wasn't it clear that it was a neo-fascist massacre? "There was no doubt in progressive circles.

Camilla Cederna was the most decisive in denouncing the frame-up A campaign by the extra-parliamentary left arose which resulted in a book, The State Massacre".

And you? "I did not share the political thesis of the book and preferred to go to Treviso, where the investigating judge Giancarlo Stiz and the prosecutor Pietro Calogero had collected the testimony of a Christian Democrat, Guido Lorenzon, who accused the neo-fascist Giovanni Ventura" And Valpreda? "He was waiting in prison.

First in Regina Coeli, then in Catanzaro She wrote poems to keep from going crazy.

He was acquitted in 1979, but then the Cassation annulled the sentence and ordered a new trial in Bari, which ended only in 1985 An ordeal ".

How long had he been detained? "Three years, up to 1972" What do we know about Piazza Fontana today? "The Cassation, in 2005, thirty-six years after the events, recognized the responsibility of the neo-fascists franco freda and Giovanni Ventura, but was unable to condemn them because they had already been acquitted for the same affair in 1987".

And why was the bomb placed? "To divert the republican course Piazza Fontana is like Portella della Ginestra: an attempt to overthrow the democratic system.

The investigation was carried out very crudely by the Milanese police forces The commissioner, Marcello Guida, had been the director of the fascist prison of Ventotene.

Among the anti-fascist prisoners was Sandro Pertini" When was Valpreda rehabilitated? "Twenty years after the indictment.

A great scandal: the evidence against the anarchists was laughable An aunt of Valpreda had testified that she was at her house, with a fever.

She was not believed In the spring of 1969 there had already been attacks on trains by the extreme right.

He pretended not to see them" Did a ruling class that came from fascism dominate? "The investigations were conducted by Silvano Russomanno, who had served in the Republic of Salò and fought in a German military formation.

He was the right arm of the most powerful executive of the Viminale, Umberto Federico D'Amato, the head of the confidential affairs office, who has just been recognized as one of the organizers and instigators of the Bologna massacre of August 2, 1980" Even now there is is an anarchist in prison who goes on hunger strike, Alberto Cospito.

Is it right that it stays at 41 bis? "No, that's not quite right " What did his parents do? "Dad was a railway worker, mother was a housewife".

Where's born? "In Pescara, on July 17, 1940 But my parents lived in Ancona, and I stayed there until I graduated.

I went back the other day to plead for the mayor, Valeria Mancinelli, as a civil party" When do you arrive in Rome? "In 1959.

I enrolled in law, and won a scholarship to stay in the student house in via De Lollis, in San Lorenzo There were 130 places for the winners of the competition.

And there were sixty thousand students" At what age did he graduate? "Twenty-four.

I took the air force competition before graduating, and I won it I needed a salary.

After graduation, I won the competition to become a university professor" What were the boom years like in Rome? "There was enormous energy.

I was very left-wing, and I wrote to the Psiup, the party of Lelio Basso and Vittorio Foa, which had just split from the Socialist Party" Wasn't he a communist? "I joined the PCI later, when Enrico Berlinguer became secretary".

Did he know him well? "Enough When I defended the secretary of the Chilean communists, Luis Corvalan after Pinochet's coup d'état, he gave me a book with a dedication to deliver to him".

Where was Corvalan? "In a concentration camp, with barbed wire, like Auschwitz The country had sunk into a ferocious dictatorship.

Even his lawyer had been arrested At a certain point, the Soviet Union proposed an exchange".

What exchange? " The Soviets would have freed a well-known dissident writer Vladimir Bukovskji, and in exchange Pinochet would have released Corvalan When I told him he refused ".

Why?" He didn't want the pardon: "But did Gramsci ask for it?", He asked me He was expelled.

The exchange then took place in Switzerland" In those years you became a friend of Oriana Fallaci.

"A very intelligent woman, but with an impossible character I used to drive her around Rome on my moped.

It was she who asked me to defend Alexandros Panagulis" The protagonist of A Man? "Him.

I went to Athens, where the colonels kept him in prison, torturing him, tortured him "How did he find him?"They didn't want to let me see him.

I had an interview with the Minister of the Interior and I told him that I would report the matter at the next day I found myself on the front page of a pro-colonel newspaper.

The ambassador summoned me, telling me that I was in grave danger" Did he leave the country? "First I absolutely wanted to see Mycenae.

So I went to Mycenae and only afterwards did I return to Rome" Then Panagulis died in an accident.

"It was clearly an attack" Were the seventies as terrible as they say? "In Italy there was a series of incredible massacres.

Piazza Fontana, Peteano, the Italicus, piazza della Loggia But at the same time the left was growing impetuously.

And there was the referendum on divorce, which marked an advance in civil conquests" She was a militant lawyer.

"I had become the secretary of the democratic jurists The PCI had a very firm guide in Ugo Pecchioli.

He said that the party should have brought civil action in the massacre and terrorism trials Thus I defended the victims of all the attacks, Gino Giugni, shot in the legs by the Red Brigades, the family members of Licio Giorgeri and Ezio Tarantelli, killed by terrorists, up to those of the Bologna massacre.

See that lithograph? Torquato Secci, the president of the Victims' Family Association, gave it to me: the fee for my defense in the trial " Have you ever been afraid? "Once.

Licio Gelli, the head of the P2, mentioned my name in an interview, saying that he had to deal with me" Have you ever dealt with the mafia? "At the Palermo maxi-trial I witnessed the family members of General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa's escort .

After the sentence the carabinieri called me: " We learned that the gangs intend to hit a lawyer in Rome It could be her or Alfredo Biondi.

Biondi had the escort, I didn't They put me under guardianship.

And they gave me the license to carry a firearm" Did you buy a pistol? "Yes.

But I Never Took It With Me I Hid It In A Closet

I don't even know where he is anymore" Have you kept all the documents of the trials? "I donated them to the Gramsci Institute".

What qualities must a lawyer have? "Great intellectual independence" And the greatest dowry to win a trial?" The intelligence in identifying the best strategy to convince the judges of the validity of your theses.

You have to be credible" What is the most complicated thing? Getting paid by the customer? "I don't have that talent at all".

I Don't Believe It "yes, Yes

The payments are handled by fellow students I didn't ask Valpreda anything.

Just as I defended the victims of terrorism for free" And how did he make ends meet? "I was a university professor, in Camerino and in Rome.

My wife worked at the Foreign Ministry We have two children, Paolo Giulio, an architect, Alessandro, a journalist".

What do you think of Nordio as minister? "Don't make me talk about today's politics" nordio investigated d'alema whom you defended.

"I also defended Achille Occhetto and Marcello Stefanini, the treasurer of the PCI" Were the communists involved in Tangentopoli? "No! They have always been acquitted, some acquittals came when Stefanini was already dead".

You were a friend of Pasolini enlisting him for a faculty lecture.

She invited me to her house in Eur to talk about it " What do you remember about it? " Her mother made us coffee.

The theme of the conference was cinema and literature We prepared it for a long time.

Pasolini had the culture of a university professor and was extraordinarily polite" How did the conference go? "We waited for him in front of the student house gate.

When he arrived he was covered in paint Two extremists had thrown it at him.

The police didn't lift a finger "Why does Pasolini speak to today's students too?" And then he was prophetic, visionary ".

Did he see far away? " Think of the famous article "I know" about the instigators of the massacres D'Amato's condemnation in Bologna comes to mind: exponents of the institutions that have betrayed their mandate".

What do the massacres reveal? "That in Italy there was a double state, one real, the other occult, to quote the words of my master Norberto Bobbio" Who killed Pasolini ? "It was a political assassination.

Passed off as a common crime" You were the patron of the civil action.

"It was clear that Pino Pelosi, accused in the trial, could not have acted alone And the judge who sentenced him, Alfredo Carlo Moro, the brother of the president of the DC also came to this conclusion".

Who were the assassins? "At least five people The DNA of as many people was identified on his car, but not even a drop of Pelosi's blood was found.

And yet they didn't want to investigate "Why was he killed?" He didn't have to speak anymore.

His voice was dead And the book he was working on, Petrolio, on the Mattei case, shouldn't have come out.

"Was Pasolini hated? "During his lifetime he had undergone 33 trials Every time he presented a book he was contested, offended.

And they were always the same people" Was the hostility also due to the fact that he frequented the world of child prostitution? "He was an open homosexual, he claimed his sexual freedom".

You tried to reopen the case "And I succeeded, thanks to a video by Sergio Citti and a parliamentary question by Walter Veltroni on Marcello Dell'Utri and the book Petrolio".

What did the video reveal? "Filmed on the scene of the crime, at the seaplane base of Ostia, it confirmed the thesis of a ambush more people" The last hypothesis is that Pasolini will go to the Idroscalo to recover the reels of Salò.

"It convinces me very little " Are we still the country of mysteries? "I think it's journalistic ruminations.

" Meaning what? Do we know the whole truth? "Almost all of it Then at every conference I give there is always someone who stands up and invokes truth and justice on the massacres.

The right request, but whoever killed was convicted, those responsible are morally identified" Has the truth emerged? "We know almost everything about terrorism.

We need to be able to read the sentences If one reads the reasons of the united sections of the Cassation on the Bologna massacre, one understands that they can only have been Francesca Mambro and Giusva Fioravanti.

Yet alternative tracks are insisted on" No country has had the massacres we have had.

"This is true But do Americans know who killed Kennedy? The Swedes who killed Olaf Palme?".