Milan, 19 June 2024 – On 13 November 1982, the day of the raid on the hideout of the Red Brigades on the seventh floor of an anonymous condominium in Cinisello Balsamo, Marco Mancini was a young 22-year-old carabiniere, faced with one of the most difficult tests. The memory of that blitz conducted by the Special Anti-Crime Section of Milan founded by General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa is still alive, almost 42 years later. That day marked a fundamental step in the fight against terrorismwith the capture of the Polyclinic nurse Ettorina Zacchaeushead of the Walter Alasia Column Hospital Brigade.
She was the one who cheated Luigi Marangoni – medical director of the Milanese hospital murdered on 17 February 1981 – indicating him as a target to be hit in a season marked by attacks against magistrates, doctors, journalists, politicians and law enforcement agencies. Ettorina Zaccheo was sentenced to life imprisonment, later obtained a reduction of the sentence, and she was welcomed by the community founded by Don Gino Rigoldi.
The man who participated in his capture in 1982, at the beginning of a career that then took him to the top of the secret services and anti-terrorism, author of the book “The Rules of the Game”Yesterday he met Marangoni’s wife and children in the main hall of the Polyclinic.
The meeting moderated by Mario Calabresi, son of Commissioner Luigi Calabresi, also a victim of terrorism, was attended by colleagues and friends of the killed hospital manager: the former Minister of Health Girolamo Sirchia, a doctor at the Polyclinic at the time, and Doctor Basilio Tiso. And Gaetano Maria Fara, laboratory director at the beginning of the ’80s, who also ended up in the sights of the Red Brigades. The current director, Matteo Stocco, welcomed them.
Mancini, what is your memory of the raid on the Cinisello Balsamo hideout?
“We had received information from an arrested member of the Red Brigades that the operational base of the Alasia column was located in Via Terenghi, which had committed several murders and terrorist acts in Lombardy. At 3 in the morning, with the support of the Carabinieri of Cinisello Balsamo, we entered the building and went up to the seventh floor. I knocked on the door, qualifying myself as a carabiniere. Shortly after I heard a metallic noise, typical of the loading of a rifle or pistol, but fortunately from inside they said: ‘We surrender’. We entered and I immediately recognized Daniele Bonato, a fugitive Red Brigade member. I had the task of searching a bedroom.”
What did he find?
“In the room there was the arsenal of the Red Brigades: Ak47 rifles, TNT, bombs, pistols. Also in the house was Ettorina Zaccheo, the nurse who had provided the information to hit Marangoni. When we entered she tried to put her hand in the bedside table to take a weapon, then we blocked her and she declared herself a political prisoner. Many terrorists have repented in the following years, she never did.”
What did that blitz represent in the battle against the Red Brigades?
“It was an important stage because in the hideout, in addition to the weapons, we also found numerous documents. We managed to dismantle the central structure of the Walter Alasia column, following the teachings of General Dalla Chiesa, who had been assassinated in Palermo a few weeks earlier”.
Why did the Red Brigades decide to kill Marangoni?
“Marangoni was killed because he was a respectable person, who had denounced the infiltration of terrorists into the hospital environment, without closing his eyes. Like the other victims, he was killed because he did his duty with rectitude and courage, making the system work I am thinking of Guido Rossa, of the magistrates Galli and Alessandrini, of the then deputy commander in the San Vittore prison Francesco Di Cataldo, of the personnel director of Ercole Marelli Renato Briano, just to mention a few names”.
Coming to the present, are there still dangers related to terrorism in Italy?
“The dangers are mainly linked to Islamic terrorism and the so-called ‘lone wolves’ who, despite there no longer being an ISIS operations centre, continue to strike in Europe. This is why we must not lower our guard, monitor and identify these people and prevent them from striking. Also because some attackers who acted abroad, I am thinking of the recent case in Brussels, passed through Italy”.
