The New Inquisition
A Grotesque Frameup Against Anarchists

The Silocchi Trial

Mirella Silocchi, the wife of an industrial tycoon, was kidnapped in Parma in 1989. For twenty months following the kidnapping, the investigation led to nothing until chief of police Improta sketched out his thesis: those responsible for the kidnapping were to be found among the Sardinian community and were to have acted in collaboration with anarchists and Armenians. An incredible frameup was set up, with the help of various characters who had been threatened and blackmailed by secret services and police. The thesis was that the kidnappers were members of the ‘Anonymous Sardinian Kidnappers’and an inexistant ‘Rome Anarchist Group’.

The first trial, which took place in Parma in an atmosphere of fear and terror, was like a farce: certain witnesses were completely absent, others were anonymous; the defence couldn’t prove the innocence of the accused because the public prosecutors themselves couldn’t give any evidence of guilt. The conclusion was heavy: six life sentences (Garagin, Staffa, Sanna, Porcu, Goddi, Scrocco) and a twenty-two years’ sentence (Campo).
In February 1995 the appeal trial was held in Bologna and ended with the confirmation of the previous charges apart from a few changes: Staffa was sentenced to thirty years instead of life and Giovanni Barcia, who had been acquitted, was given a life sentence.

The way both the trials were carried out clearly shows that technical and judicial elements had no importance whatsoever, because the verdict had been decided in advance on the grounds of a repressive strategy ad hoc.
In 1996 a new trial was held in Bologna by the Court of Cassation. This time the defence brought some elements which seemed to be decisive: first they proved that Garagin and Scrocco were not in Italy when Silocchi was kidnapped or during the months that followed; then Orlando Campo’s typewriter, which in the previous hearings was claimed to be the one used by the kidnappers to write to the Silocchi family, was actually made after those letters were sent.

So, the court quashed the sentences of the previous trial but didn’t take into account any of the new evidence brought by the defence: on the one hand it acquitted Staffa and Sanna (who had first been considered to be Silocchi’s keepers) and Orlando Campo, on the other it sentenced the other accused to thirty years, apart from Giovanni Barcia, who was aquitted.

The reasons for the sentence have not yet been made known but it seems obvious that the case against them is beginning to collapse little by little. What emerges is a gang of kidnappers without keepers, telephonists abroad during the kidnapping and so on. The lawyers are having recourse to the Court of Cassation again.
Meantime, Orlando Campo, acquitted after doing six years in prison, is now under house arrest: he has been sentenced to 10 years by prosecutor Marini for the crime of ‘belonging to an armed band’. A first request for his liberation has been refused and he is waiting for the appeal.

Updated from a report by Anarchist Defence Committee c/o El Paso occupato
8 January 1998