Giuseppe Pinelli

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. During the 1960s, he continued anarchist activism. He organized young anarchists in the Gioventù Libertaria (Libertarian Youth) in 1962. In 1965, he helped found the Anarchist Association named after Sacco and Vanzetti. He also founded the Ponte della Ghisolfa association (named after the nearby bridge) in 1968. == Suspicious circumstances surrounding his death ==

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. 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. He described Pinelli's suicide as "a hoax", as General Vito Miceli had reportedly confided to him. Brigadier Vito Panessa was also quoted as saying that one of the policemen who were in the room of Calabresi that night had joked: "Pinelli asked for it that night." According to Panessa, there was not just an unexpected incident involving somewhat harsh policemen but someone who had taken revenge on Pinelli, who persisted in not confessing after three days of illegal interrogation. Maletti concluded: "Pinelli refuses to answer questions. The interrogators then resort to stronger means and threaten to throw him out the window. They jerk him and force him to sit on the windowsill. With each negative response, Pinelli is pushed a little further towards the void. Finally, he loses his balance and falls." == In popular culture ==

Pinelli's death is the inspiration for Dario Fo's 1970 play Accidental Death of an Anarchist, although in the original script his name was not mentioned explicitly.--> and included an interview to Pinelli's mother and wife. 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. == See also ==