THE MEMORY OF LEAD

They lived in Milan, marginal, rebellious young men with no political plans other than “proletarian revenge”.  In the space of fourteen months, from April 1978 to June 1979, they executed four people and seriously injured four more. These avengers have mostly served out their sentences, but a few have not. After his imprisonment in France and his escape in 2004, Cesare Battisti (who was sent down for life) was eventually granted political asylum in Brazil in 2011. This culprit, amongst others, has become the very archetype of a culprit. Despite the repercussions of these events, the legal files are still confidential. This book retraces the politics of these “armed Proletarians” as well as the story of their crime and of their trial. Whether now penitent, “dissociated” from the affair or simply  convicts, their memory is not at all the stuff of romantic legend, and is still tainted with lead, death and guilt.

The sudden intervention of the “Mitterrand doctrine” in the affair is another secret. This policy for taking in refugees from the “years of lead” was discretionary and far from egalitarian. Some of the fugitives who were directly responsible for attacks were secretly driven away, while others were admitted by the legal system… for political rather than humanitarian reasons. European states are now united in their anti-terrorist stance, and the lost soldiers of communism are no longer seen as heroes. Perhaps that is why Cesare Battisti pleads his innocence.

Karl Laske is a journalist for Mediapart. This is his eighth book after the very well received Le vrai canard (Stock, 2008).