Giuseppe "Pino" Pinelli (21 October 1928 – 15 December 1969) was an Italian railroad worker and
anarchist
Anarchism is a political philosophy and Political movement, movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or Social hierarchy, hierarchy, primarily targeting the state (polity), state and capitalism. A ...
, who died while being detained by the ''
Polizia di Stato
The (State Police or P.S.) is one of the national Law enforcement in Italy, police forces of Italy. Alongside the Carabinieri, it is the main police force for providing police duties, primarily to cities and large towns, and with its child agen ...
'' in 1969. Pinelli was a member of the
Milan
Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...
-based anarchist association named Ponte della Ghisolfa. He was also the secretary of the Italian branch of the
Anarchist Black Cross. His death, believed by many to have been caused by members of the police, inspired
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...
laureate
Dario Fo to write his famous play titled ''
Accidental Death of an Anarchist''.
Early life

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
World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
Milan. Although he had to work in many low-income jobs, such as waiter and warehouseman,
in order to make ends meet, he nonetheless found the time to read many books and become politically active throughout his youth.
Among other political activities, he also worked with the anarchist group that published the weekly paper ''Il Libertario'' (''The Libertarian'').
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
Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely spoken Constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 to be 'the International Language' (), it is intended to be a universal second language for ...
.
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.
Just before midnight on 15 December 1969, Pinelli was seen to fall to his death from a fourth-floor window of the Milan police station.
His death was widely believed to have been caused by members of the police. Three police officers interrogating Pinelli, including Commissioner
Luigi Calabresi
Luigi Calabresi (14 November 1937 – 17 May 1972) was an Italian ''Polizia di Stato'' officer in Milan. Responsible for investigating far-left political movements, Calabresi was assassinated in 1972 by members of ''Lotta Continua'', who blamed ...
, 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.
Since his death, Pinelli's name was cleared,
and the far-right ''
Ordine Nuovo'' was accused of the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing.
In 2001, three
neo-fascists were convicted,
a sentence that was overturned in March 2004;
a fourth defendant, Carlo Digilio, was a suspected
CIA informant who became a witness for the state and received immunity from prosecution.
Calabresi was later killed by two shots from a revolver outside his home in 1972. 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
(; , ) was the military intelligence intelligence agency, agency of Italy from 1977 to 2007.
With the reform of the Italian Intelligence Services approved on 1 August 2007, SISMI was replaced by Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna (AISE). ...
, 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 play ''
Accidental Death of an Anarchist'', although in the original script his name was not mentioned explicitly.
The political documentary film ''
12 dicembre'' (1972) directed by
Giovanni Bonfanti about Pinelli's death was based on an idea by
Pier Paolo Pasolini 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.
In ''
Piazza Fontana: The Italian Conspiracy'' (2012), Pinelli was portrayed by
Pierfrancesco Favino. 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
*
Andrea Salsedo
* ''
The Funeral of the Anarchist Pinelli''
*
Pietro Valpreda
*
Police brutality
*
Strategy of tension
Notes
References
External links
La ballata del Pinelli [Ballata dell'anarchico Pinelli, o Il feroce questore Guidaat Canzoni contro la guerra (in Italian)
* at Nelvento.net (in Italian)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pinelli, Giuseppe
1928 births
1969 deaths
20th-century anarchists
Anarcho-syndicalists
Assassinated anarchists
Assassinated Italian people
Deaths by defenestration
Deaths related to the Years of Lead (Italy)
Italian anarchists
People murdered in 1969
People murdered in Lombardy