Life as the price to pay for having recounted the present and interpreted, right down to the end, the job of a journalist. That of the deputy director of La Stampa is a story that marks a turning point in the history of Italy.
Casalegno was the first victim among the members of the “fourth power” by Italian terrorism. Murder that would be repeated in similar ways later, as in the case of Walter Tobagi, reporter for Corriere della Sera, assassinated on May 28, 1980 by the March XXVIII Brigade in Milan. Already the first sign that political violence was pouring out against journalists was seen precisely in June of that year, ’77, when left-wing extremists again shot the editor of the newspaper Indro Montanelli in the legs. One of the moments of maximum tension in the history of Italy, caught in the grip of armed struggle. The years of bombs, massacres, kidnappings and murders. But even if exceptional times provide for exceptional solutions, Casalegno has always opposed the introduction of ad hoc laws to combat terrorism.
Turinese by birth and by vocation, Casalegno was a full expression of the culture of his city: after attending the Massimo d’Azeglio classical high school, he graduated in Literature at the University of Turin and then, from 1942 to 1943, he teacher at the Palli high school in Casale Monferrato. He took part in the Resistance by joining the Action Party and collaborating with his newspaper Italia libera. After the war, he continued to collaborate with the magazine Giustizia e Libertà, which had taken the place of Italia libera. From 1951 to 1954 he was director of the magazine Resistenza. Justice and Liberty.
In 1947 he began his experience at La Stampa, which would last 30 years. In 1968 he became deputy director, becoming the only columnist on internal politics, besides the then director Arrigo Levi. From 1969 to 1977, in his weekly column entitled “Our State”, he wrote italics on topical issues and burning issues such as divorce, the secular state and, in particular, terrorism, thus becoming the sworn enemy of the Red Brigades. Casalegno always chose the line of legality, asking for the utmost firmness in applying the already existing ordinary laws to combat the phenomenon and prevent it from finding support and taking root in civil society.
The deputy director totally rejected the idea of applying extraordinary measures to counter terrorism, knowing full well that in Italy the exception becomes the rule and that extraordinary laws could have become a tool against democratic freedoms. In 1971 he was among the few Italian journalists to publicly take the defense of the prefect Libero Mazza, author of a confidential report in which in alarming tones he described the entire extra-parliamentary left active in Milan as highly violent.
In 1976 the maxi-trial of the Red Brigades opened in Turin, in the former barracks transformed into a bunker courtroom on Corso Ferrucci, which saw Renato Curcio among its main defendants. The tension during the trial became very high, leading to the assassination of the lawyer Fulvio Croce, who had taken up the official defense of the Red Brigade members despite the fact that they had threatened to kill anyone who did so. The process continued with the mass renunciation of the citizens called to compose the popular jury. In this context, Casalegno with his articles exhorted everyone not to retreat in the face of terrorism, to do their part.
A year later, on 16 November 1977 at 1.55 pm, while he was returning to his home in Corso Re Umberto 54, Casalegno was ambushed by a group of the Turin section of the Red Brigades, made up of Raffaele Fiore, Patrizio Peci, Piero Panciarelli, Cristoforo Piancone and Vincenzo Acella.
The front page of La Stampa after the attack on Carlo Casalegno
At first the attackers perhaps had in mind to replicate the same scheme operated in Milan against Montanelli, but, after a series of postponements and after an internal discussion in the Turin column, the attack on the legs was commuted to a death sentence due to new articles signed by the Turin journalist who criticized the armed struggle. The members of the Red Brigades had planned to hit the journalist directly in the entrance hall of the building. Raffaele Fiore had the task of shooting, covered by Piero Panciarelli, while Peci remained to stand guard armed with a machine gun. Acella was driving the car prepared for the getaway.
Casalegno was hit by four blows to the face. Rescued by his wife, the journalist was hospitalized in very serious conditions at the Le Molinette hospital. At that juncture an attempt was made in Turin to organize demonstrations of solidarity: the evening following the day of the attack (November 17), there was a popular demonstration of citizens against terrorism in Piazza San Carlo with the participation of several thousand people.
The deputy director of La Stampa died on November 29, 1977, after 13 days of agony. The funeral was attended by the lawyer Gianni Agnelli, the politicians Bettino Craxi and Giovanni Spadolini and the then minister Carlo Donat-Cattin. In addition to his wife Adele “Dedi” Andreis (who died in May of this year), Carlo Casalegno left behind a 33-year-old son, Andrea, a journalist and militant of Lotta Continua. His body rests in the Monumental Cemetery, among the illustrious citizens of the history of Turin.
The widow of Carlo Casalegno, killed by the Red Brigades in ’77, died in Turin
During the trial in the Court of Assizes, which took place in Turin in the summer of 1983, the members of the Red Brigades said that they had decided to kill him rather than shoot him in the legs (as they had instead done with Indro Montanelli) mainly due to a harsh article published in La Print of 9 November ’77 entitled “New laws are not needed, just apply the existing ones. Terrorism and closure of hideouts”. According to Peci, Casalegno was sentenced to death for having offended the memory of some members of the Red Army Faction (RAF) who died in prison in Germany between October and November 1977.
In memory of the deputy director, La Stampa awards the “Carlo Casalegno” award on a weekly basis: “Recognition entitled to the memory of the deputy director of the newspaper symbol of the values of the Constitution and victim of terrorism”, awarded to the journalist who stood out the most for articles or reports of particular value.
In 2004, mindful of the battle for the defense of legality, the University of Turin, where Casalegno had graduated in Literature in 1942, awarded him a posthumous honorary degree in Law.
Even today, Casalegno remains a symbol of its city. Gianni Agnelli said of him: «Of the Turinese, Casalegno had the rigor, the seriousness, the awareness of duty, the ability to think through the facts, to judge only after having examined them».