Gilberto Giorgio Guido Cavallini, 67 years old, former terrorist of the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari, is the fourth man in the station massacre. The Court of Assizes of Bologna has established this: in the year of the fortieth anniversary of the attack of August 2, 1980, 85 dead and 200 injured, the judges have pronounced a life sentence, as requested by the public prosecution. This decision was reached after six and a half hours of deliberation, at the end of a process that lasted almost two years, 40 hearings and around fifty witnesses heard. Already sentenced to eight life sentences for various crimes, Cavallini is now on semi-liberty in Terni. It is unlikely that he will serve the new life sentence, when and if it is final, given his 37 years in detention. But the sentence is still a piece of continuity with the judicial truth that sees the other three NAR members as responsible: Giuseppe Valerio Fioravanti, Francesca Mambro and Luigi Ciavardini, comrades in arms of Cavallini, known as 'the negro', the oldest member of the gang. “I can’t regret what I didn’t do. I also say on behalf of my group mates that we have no one to ask for forgiveness for what happened on August 2, 1980. We are not the ones who should lower our eyes in Bologna", reiterated the defendant, in his latest spontaneous declarations to the Court, in line with what was maintained by the NAR, who over time have admitted the crimes committed in his youth, but never the attack in Bologna. Mambro, Fioravanti and Ciavardini had the opportunity to reaffirm their innocence during this long trial in which, as in a sort of judicial remake, they were called to testify, as were many other protagonists of the story, former militants, informers, acquaintances of the group, who revisited the context around which the bloodiest attack of post-war Italy would have matured. A broad investigation, where there was room for an expert opinion on explosives that led to the analysis of the rubble of the station, forgotten in a barracks on the outskirts. And for a genetic test that saw the exhumation of the coffin of a victim, Maria Fresu, discovering that the DNA of the remains contained in the coffin was not that of the young dead woman. This is a point on which Cavallini's defense insisted, sowing doubts and proposing alternative paths, defining a trial 40 years after the facts as "inhumane". We will also need to understand what reasoning the judges used in requalifying the crime, eliminating the purpose of attacking the security of the State. The Bologna Prosecutor's Office instead proposed a reinterpretation consistent with the final sentences, focusing on the complicity, that is, on the support, at least logistical, that Cavallini gave to the three, and underlining, among other things, the absence of an alibi for the NAR. A leading role was played by the civil parties, that is, the relatives of the victims, who were always numerous in following the hearings, and today satisfied with the outcome. Their lawyers have repeatedly tried to broaden their gaze to include alleged links between the NAR and deviant state apparatuses. “The next step,” said lawyer Andrea Speranzoni, “will be a very important piece of truth about who financed, favored, coordinated and optimized the political outcome of the Massacre.” And that is the issue of the instigators, at the center of an investigation taken over by the Attorney General's Office, which is about to close the ranks with some of the suspects. It could be a further step towards the truth in one of the great Italian mysteries.
EDITORIAL TEAM
Choose the social channel you want to subscribe to