Death of an Anarchist

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2016

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Giuseppe Pinelli was an Italian anarchist arrested by police in Milan. A few days later he was seen falling out of the police station window. It is still not clear exactly what happened to Pinelli. Right-wing activists were later convicted of carrying out the bombing for which he'd been arrested. His story was turned into a popular play by the Italian dramatist Dario Fo. Anna O'Neill has been speaking to Silvia and Claudia Pinelli about their father, and their continued search for the truth.

Photo:Giuseppe 'Pino' Pinelli, with his wife Licia and his daughters Silvia and Claudia. Credit: The Pinelli Family.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to witness with me Anna O'Neill. I'm in Milan in northern Italy looking
0:06.2	up at the fourth floor of the city's main police station. It was from one of these windows
0:11.2	that just before midnight on December the 15th, 1969, an Italian
0:16.3	railroad worker and anarchist named Giuseppe Pinellee was seen to fall to his death whilst
0:22.1	in police custody.
0:23.3	The event inspired the popular play,
0:25.8	Accidental Death of an Anarchist,
0:27.6	a notorious political farce by Italian playwright Dariopho.
0:31.5	Now, superintendent, think carefully.
0:34.0	The report quotes you as having said,
0:36.0	there are heavy suspicions pointing in his direction.
0:41.0	Did you say that?
0:42.0	Yes, in the beginning later. The beginning a good place to start don't you agree?
0:46.6	Certainly. Thank you. Now towards midnight the anarchist seized by a raptus, your words, threw himself out of the window, thus ending his life on the pavement below.
0:58.0	Right. Exactly right.
1:00.0	Correct. To the last detail.
1:01.0	The play may have been a comedy, at least on the face of it,
1:04.5	but it was based on a tragedy, the arrest and death of an innocent man for a crime he didn't commit.
1:10.5	In Italy the time between the 1960s and the 1980s was a period of social and political turmoil
1:17.0	marked by a wave of both left-wing and right-wing political violence.
1:21.0	The Milan Bank bomb of 1969, a typical act of random terror.
1:26.0	Sixteen people were killed and dozens injured.
	...

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