Strange indeed that none of the great Italian journalists were attacked, investigative reporters, always courageously ready to disturb private funeral commemorations just to have a miserable one scoop to splash in their newspapers, or always ready to go and infiltrate political demonstrations hoping to arouse a reaction - preferably violent - from people exasperated by constant provocations that have nothing to do with journalism, strange, we were saying, than to any of these protagonists talk show television, anti-fascists in active permanent service, it came to mind to connect the Battisti affair to a similar one in many ways - except for the different caliber of the characters - which happened in the now very distant October 1982, but which saw a very different and dramatic conclusion compared to that of these hours. The facts always happened in Bolivia, always to Santa Cruz de la Sierra, the operation was always conducted by our Services, even if they were called differently then, and the protagonist was always a fugitive wanted by the Italian state. Many, herds of analogy.

However, they stop here, because his name was the wanted boy that our services had gone to pick up Pierluigi Pagliai and was an adherent of National Vanguard. The young 28 year old Milanese, but, he had not been convicted of four murders and various crimes, like Cesare Battisti, no; On the contrary, he had never been convicted of anything. The only real fault he had at that moment was draft evasion. A little short to be executed with two shots in the back of the head by Bolivian policemen and our services in front of a church, and after he had placed his hands on his head the sign of surrender. Pagliai was taken to the local hospital, then to La Paz, but his conditions immediately appeared desperate. Charged forcibly and against the advice of doctors, by Italian emissaries on a plane of our national airline Alitalia, Giotto to be precise, Pagliai died a few days later without having regained consciousness. He was an innocent boy, guilty only of having extremist ideas (but then it's a fault?), yet he was killed like a dog. Why? The explanation is tragically clear: because he was considered a “fascist”, than in the ears of many politicians, magistrates, journalists, It's worse than being a multiple murderer: a fascist is the bilge of all evils. And even today there are those who think this way. And then for Pierluigi Pagliai there was no Red Aid, there were no ranks of lawyers, deputies, actors, writers, journalists, rich radical-chic people who raised their voices for his murder. Simply, it had no right to exist: “Killing a fascist is not a crime”. And so it was.

The Services were unable to find culprits for Bologna

But of course this story also needs to be contextualised: Let's put ourselves in the shoes of the Italian government, Let's put ourselves in the shoes of the investigators of the time. Il 2 August 1980, that is, two years earlier, there had been the Bologna massacre, and before that many more bombs, all by an unknown author. The media had immediately - however unjustifiably - pointed the finger at the subversive right, tension was at its highest levels. But above all, we couldn't get anything out of the hole: the culprits could not be found, there was no lead, hundreds were carried out (and it's not a figure of speech) of arrests of neo-fascists (then all released without even an apology), thousands of searches and interrogations were carried out, but the culprit never came out. The foreign lead wasn't even taken into consideration, because the fascist had to be found. Let's imagine that the Interior Ministry was crazy, with political pressures demanding a culprit at all costs. As, with the emotional wave of the hunt for the fascist, and with the press which accused the usual of any crime and atrocity Stefano Delle Chiaie, head of National Vanguard, the simplest strategy was to strike in that direction, all the more so since theintelligentsia pseudo cultural Italian was on that side. Of the Chiaie, Then, he had had to take refuge in Bolivia for some time, together with other comrades including Pagliai himself, to escape the indiscriminate persecution against the world of the right. Then Delle Chiaie, accused of almost everything in a ridiculous way, he always managed to mock the Services, who were very angry with him. As, after the failed operation Pall Mall of our Services, aimed at capturing Delle Chiaie, I'll launch another one, the operation Marlboro, always to capture the Vanguard leader, which moreover, being a fugitive, he could not properly defend himself. The details of the operation are still unknown today, but according to the testimonies we have managed to collect, the commando of our leatherheads was composed of 20 all 30 people, even if some sources speak of 80 elements, who acted in collaboration with the Bolivian police and American CIA agents, who knows why. Among other things, it seems that the Americans also collaborated in the Battisti operation. And the city is the same too. It must be said that about someone's unverified statements, the Italian judiciary issued arrest warrants for the massacre against Delle Chiaie, Pagliai and others. An officer of the Bolivian police, who had good relations with Pagliai, he arranged to meet him in front of the church of Nuestra Senora del Carmen in Santa Cruz, and when he arrived he was immediately surrounded by at least thirty carabineros with weapons in hand. Pagliai immediately raised his hands and placed them on his head as a sign of surrender, but he was hit by two bullets in the head. As said, he was first taken to Santa Cruz hospital, then to that of the capital La Paz, operated by Professor Brunn, doctor at the US embassy, and loaded, against the advice of doctors, on the plane headed to Italy. Even the American ambassador obtained the expulsion decree from the Bolivian transitional government and paid the airport fees in order to speed up the departure.

For Pagliai Staiti and Pannella accused Prime Minister Spadolini

After a period of confusion, also media, and since even then there was no one to defend the “fascists”, the deputies Tomaso Staiti of the MSI e Marco Pannella of the radicals, they accused the then Prime Minister Giovanni Spadolini, who gave the green light to the operation in agreement with the Minister of the Interior Virginio Rognoni, but the proceedings were quickly dismissed. It was only thanks to prefect Parisi's subsequent procedural declarations that anything more about the affair became known. But just as quickly it was forgotten. Here we want to remember a letter from Pagliai's father, Alberto, to the director of Republic Scalfari, in which Alberto Pagliai disputes what the newspaper wrote, that is, that Pierluigi was a terrorist, and underlining the fact that he had a clean criminal record. In conclusion, we are once again faced with double standards behavior on the part of our institutions between right and left. The proof? Here it is: Why our Services did not go in Brazil to take Achille Lollo, the rich Potere Operaio terrorist who burned a boy and a child alive because they were fascists, while the Italian Services promptly rushed a military C-130 to Costa Rica in 1979 to take over Franco Freda who had taken refuge there? As well as why they flew to Bolivia to pick up Pagliai, innocent until proven guilty, but they never considered flying to Brazil to capture Battisti, definitively convicted? The answer is all too clear.